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OF-ALirTRADES 

IV MARGARET'V APPLEGARTH 




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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



"JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES" 



Interdenominational 

Home Mission Study Course 

Each volume 12 mo, cloth, 57c. (postpaid) ; paper, 40c. 

(postpaid) 



Under Our Flag. By Alice M. Guernsey. 

The Call of the Waters. By Katharine R. Crowell. 

From Darkness to Light. By Mary Helm. 

Conservation of National Ideals. A Symposium. 

Mormonism, the Islam of America. By Bruce Kin- 
ney, D.D. 

The New America. By Mary Clark Barnes and Dr. 
L. C. Barnes. 

America, God's Melting Pot. By Laura Gerould Craig. 

Paper, net 25c. (postage extra). 

In Red Man's Land. A Study of the American 
Indian. By Francis E. Leupp. 

Home Missions in Action. By Edith H. Allen. 

Old Spain in New America. By Robert McLean, D.D. 
and Grace Petrie Williams. 

Missionary Milestones. By Margaret R. Seebach. 

The Path of Labor. A Symposium. 

JUNIOR COURSE 

Cloth, 45c. (postpaid); paper, 29c. (postpaid). 

Best Things in America. By Katharine R. Crowell. 
Some Immigrant Neighbors. By John R. Henry, D.D. 
Goodbird the Indian. By Gilbert L. Wilson. 
Comrades from Other Lands. By Leila Allen Dimock. 
All Along the Trail. By Sarah Gertrude Pomeroy. 
Children of the Lighthouse. By Charles L. White. 
Bearers of the Torch. By Katharine R. Crowell. 
Jack-of-All-Trades. By Margaret Applegarth. 



JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 



By 

MARGARET T. APPLEGARTH 

{Author of "Missionary Helps for Junior Children"; 
"Fifty-two Primary Missionary Stories"; 
"Fifty-two Junior Missionary Stories") 

Illustrated by 

JULIE C. PRATT 




COUNCIL OF WOMEN FOR HOME MISSIONS 
NEW YORK, N. Y. 



i*€ 



Copyright, 1918 

Council of Women for Home Missions 

New York 



FEB 25 1919 

CI.A5I2608 
'"-^vt?* 1$ 



CONTENTS 

: PREFACE 

"A Secret Between Ourselves" 

CHAPTER I page 

"Jack-of-All-Trades" (Or, The People Who 
Work for Us) 11 

CHAPTER II 

"This is the House That Jack Built" (Or, 
How Some Working People Live) . . 23 

CHAPTER III 

"Little Jack Horner" (Or, How We Get 
Our Clothes) 37 

CHAPTER IV 

"Jack and the Beanstalk" (Or, How We 
Get Our Food) 51 

CHAPTER V 

"Jack, the Giant-Killer" (Or, How We Get 
Our Coal) 63 

CHAPTER VI 

"All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull 
Boy" (Or, How to Help the Children 
Who Work) 75 



PICTURES 

PAGE 

Frontispiece — "God Give Us Eyes to Read in the 
Smoke of the Factory Chimneys the Lives of the 
Unseen People." 

The Training of Hand and Eye Must Supplement 
"Book Learning" to Make a Well Rounded Man 38 

"Wherewithal Shall We Be Clothed?" . ... 48 

"Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread" . ... 56 

Paradise Alley — No Sun, No Frontyard, No Grass, 
No Place for Play 75 

"Extry! All About the Big Fire!" ....... 80 



A SECRET BETWEEN OURSELVES! 

GROWN-UP People generally have a page at the 
front of their books called The Preface, really 
a very important part of the book where the 
author pretends to turn around from his desk, stick his 
pen behind his ear and talk in a chummy heart-to-heart 
way with the reader, explaining his point-of-view ! But 
Grown-up People hardly ever read these explanations, 
I find, — perhaps because they are in such a hurry to 
discover what chapter one says ! 

So I do not dare call this page a Preface, for fear you, 
too, will skip it; but we all love sharing a real secret, 
don't we? Especially a big important secret that so 
many people in America know nothing about. 

My secret reminds me of the old-fashioned fairy story 
about a little old cobbler who fell asleep almost every 
evening when he should have been finishing shoes for his 
customers ; he knew perfectly well that he had been asleep, 
and yet when he woke up with a start, there in his hands 
would always be a brand new pair of shoes, all ready to 
wear ! The strangest part of it was that they were much 
better shoes than he could possibly make himself. Every 
time, he used to shake his dear old white head, and 
wonder and wonder how they got there! 

So one night he closed his eyes and only pretended to 
be asleep. It was not long before there were footsteps 
as light as feathers, and little voices as soft as music 



8 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

laughing all around him; then tap-tap-i-tap came little 
hammers, and scrootch-scrootch-i-scrootch sounded little 
scissors cutting into the soft leather. The cobbler squinted 
ever so carefully through his eyelashes, and there, to his 
astonishment, all around him sat a circle of funny little 
brown goblins, with wrinkled faces, working away for 
dear life, making his shoes. 

"Who are you?" he called. 

You should have seen them drop their hammers and 
scissors, and start to scamper away ! 

"Oh, we are the Unseen People," one of the braver 
goblins said, his wrinkled face quite pale at being found 
out. "We are some of your Other Half." 

"My Other Half?" gasped the cobbler, bewildered, 
"who are they?" 

"They are Jacks-of-all-Trades," whispered the goblin, 
"they do the things for you that you can't do for your- 
self. They feed you, and clothe you, and house you, and 
warm you, and amuse you, and carry you wherever you 
want to go !" 

"Tut! Tut!" said the cobbler, "why, dear me, I 
never knew I had another Half before, I thought I was 
a whole, all by myself ! Why did I never hear of this 
before?" 

The goblin crept up very close to him: "It is the 
World's Secret, Sir, and only those who peep through 
their eyelashes with curiosity and gratitude ever find 
out!" 

Now of course you and I know that fairy stories are 
nearly always almost true; for instance, this World 



A SECRET BETWEEN OURSELVES 



9 



Secret is an actual fact, for every single one of us has a 
circle of really-truly, flesh-and-blood Unseen People 
around us, doing things for us day and night : our Other 
Half, whom one by one I want to introduce to you in 
this little book as 

JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 



#*J£22!!§tty 




JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES. 

THERE are three things you do every single day, 
I'm sure: You wear something, you eat some- 
thing, and you live somewhere, don't you? 
It seems so simple to jump out of bed and hop into a 
few clothes, and eat a little breakfast, but oh dear me! 
It isn't nearly so simple for Jack-o f -all-Trades ! You 
and I keep him just rushing and rushing and rushing, 
from the time he gets up, yawning (hours and hours 
before we do, when even the sun is hardly awake!) until 
he wearily drops into bed at night (hours and hours after 
we have gone to the Land of Nod). 

Nothing is as simple for Jack-of-all-Trades as it seems 
to be. For instance, when you look at a Boy, he really 
isn't just Boy to you, he's also : 

Hat, 

Collar, 

Necktie, 

Coat, 

Shirts, 

Buttons, 

Belt, 

Trousers, 

Pockets (marbles, knife, 

handkerchief, ETC!), 

Stockings, 

Shoes, 

11 



12 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

and there's a perfectly fascinating story about some un- 
known "Jack" behind every single one of those things a 
Boy wears. 

Shoes, for example: Long before shoes were shoes, 
they were frisking around as the skin on some animal's 
back, and probably a western cowboy in sombrero and 
shaggy lamb's wool trousers led an exciting life lassoing 
and pasturing that particular animal, which was finally 
taken to the stockyards and killed. So "Good-bye, Cow- 
boy and Butcher," and "How-do-you-do Mr. Leather 
Worker," who now takes that skin and "cures" it, until 
it becomes pliable and firm enough for comfortable shoes. 
Then "Good-bye Mr. Leather Worker," and "How-do- 
you-do Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Shoemakers in a shoe 
factory," who each had a share in making our Boy's 
shoes. 

For nowadays there are very few shoemakers who cut 

out a shoe and make it up complete and ready to wear, 

all by themselves, but in factories, — 

"It takes dozens of workers to make a shoe 
Because of the piece work they each must do" 

It's this way : one man cuts out the leather, then passes 

out the parts to the next person who sews up one part; 

another person sews up another part, someone else lines 

it, someone punches in the eyelets, another person cuts 

out the soles for someone else to sew up. Then somebody 

sews the sole part to the foot part of the shoe. Next the 

number is stamped on, someone shines it, somebody else 

strings in the laces (made by an unknown somebody 

else !), then it is put in a shoe box, made in a box factory 

by young girls. So that including the clerk at the shoe 

store and the delivery man who brought it to the Boy's 

home it took fully a hundred busy workers to make his 

shoes; and if his grateful mother should decide to hold 



J ACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 1 3 

a little reception to thank these Unseen People for making 
her Boy such a comfortable pair of $3.98 shoes, I don't 
believe her parlor would be big enough to hold all of 
them ! I really don't ! 

And how astonished the Boy's mother would be at the 
different kinds of people who would stamp awkwardly 
into the parlor. Half of them would seem to be tongue- 
tied, for Jack-of -all-Trades often can't speak English. 
For instance, there would be Jack from Sweden, called 
Johann Johnson, who cut out the shoe soles. Quite a 
giant he is, blond, with hair as golden as sunshine and 
eyes as blue as the sky. Johann has a family of dear 
little Johanns and Olafs and Sophies whom he brought 
over from Sweden in a ship four years ago. They were 
all dreadfully excited about it, for they had been very 
poor in Sweden, and Papa Johann said he was going to 
get ever so rich in America. He does earn much more 
money cutting out shoe soles than he did on his farm in 
Sweden, but it's rather tiresome to see nothing but shoe- 
soles, shoe-soles, shoe-soles, all day long! 

When he first began working in the factory, being tall, 
he could look out of the high windows at the blue sky 
with fleecy clouds scampering across it. Even through 
the factory smoke he knew what that blueness was like ! 
It made him think of the frisky lambs on his little farm in 

Sweden, and the smell of fresh-cut hay then bang ! 

How Papa Johann jumped, as the foreman slapped him 
roughly on the arm, and said crossly : "Quit yer dreamin' 
and git busy there, will ye ?" So then it had to be shoe- 
soles, shoe-soles, rush, rush, minute after minute, hour 
after hour, day after day, week after week, month after 
month, year after year. 

But you see I have wandered 'way off from the party 
the Boy's mother might give at which the guests would 



14 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

be ill at ease, because some of them knew English so 
poorly. There would be Jack from Portugal, Jaos by 
name, who shines the shoes ; and Jack from France, Jean 
by name, whose special job is heels. You can't imagine 
anything less exciting than making several thousand heels 
every single day of your life. It hunches Jean's shoulders 
over into an ugly hump and a tired frown lives right be- 
tween his eyes on his white forehead. There would be 
Jack from Germany, Hans by name, who cares for the 
machinery, and a great many of the Jacks would be 
women and girls! But both the Boy and his Mother 
would discover that girls who make shoes are exactly as 
nice, and as pretty, and get as tired doing monotonous 
hum-drum jobs, as girls anywhere! 

Perhaps you can just imagine that if the Shoe- Jacks 
crowd the parlor to the last inch, then if the Boy's Mother 
should also invite the unseen stocking weavers, the 
trousers, coat and shirt makers, and all the other Jacks 
who make belts, collars, neckties, hats and buttons, her 
entire house would be simply overflowing with people. 

I could tell you about them separately, but surely your 
arithmetic is good enough to figure, off hand, that a 
circle of at least a thousand Unseen People work industri- 
ously around any Boy to keep him in clothes. And be- 
cause girls 9 clothes are fluffier and prettier and lacier, it 
takes even more busy Unseen Workers to keep a girl 
dressed! So I hope whenever you put on your clothes 
in the morning, or take them off at night, you will look 
with new eyes at such everyday things as buttons and 
buttonholes and collars, and remember to pray the little 
prayer found at the close of this chapter. 

Now let's put on our "pretend" bonnets and make be- 
lieve that you and I are eating breakfast together at your 
house, and that everything we eat will be served to us 



J ACK-OF- ALL-TRADES 1 5 

by the Jacks-of-all-Trades who prepared it for us. I've 
chosen breakfast because it's a short meal in your home, 
isn't it? 

Suppose we have an orange first. 

Tramp ! Tramp ! Tramp ! Here come the American 
workers from California who raised the oranges, the 
Japanese pickers who picked them, the Greek boy who 
wrapped them in tissue paper, the Chinaman who packed 
them in boxes, the Irishman who shipped them, the 
Scotch freightman who carried them, the Jewish delica- 
tessen man who sold them, the German delivery boy who 
handed them to your mother at the kitchen door. Twenty- 
five persons, at the very least, helped give us our two 
little oranges ! 

Then how about the cereal ? Tramp ! Tramp ! Tramp ! 
In comes the Dutch farmer who raised the grain, the 
Bohemian reaper who cut it down, the Norwegian miller 
who ground it, the Croatian factory "hands" who pre- 
pared it specially for breakfast use, with about seven 
extra carriers and assistants and wrapping clerks, not to 
mention the Italian girls in the box factory who made the 
box, and the Poles who put the printing on it. I'm afraid 
your mother won't like to see the twenty-five or more 
cereal-Jacks stalking around her dining-room table with 
our cereal. Then right on their heels come at least 
ten persons with the cream: the farmer who owns the 
cow, the milker who milked her, the person who "sepa- 
rated" the cream from the milk, the girl who put the milk 
in bottles, the girl who flipped the pasteboard lids in the 
bottles, the milkman who left them at your door in the 
wee small hours of this dark morning — and, hardest of 
all, those tired, thin, wan little fellows in the glass factory 
who made the bottles : "The 'cracker-off' boy, who deftly 
taps from the blower's pipe the 'circle' of glass dangling 



16 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

from the end of the blown glass ; the 'holding-mold' boy, 
who opens and shuts the mold; the 'snapping-up' boy, 
who takes the unnecked ware and holds it to the 'glory- 
hole' in the furnace to reheat it so that the 'carry-in' boy 
can rush it to the finisher, where another boy races with 
it to the annealing oven to temper it for packing. Every 
motion is hurried; every boy is a darting automaton in 
his little rat-run of service. No halting; no lagging, no 
resting ; nothing waits."* And whatever the temperature 
outdoors, the "snap-up" boy works where it is 140 
degrees, — so we won't enjoy seeing the poor bottle-mak- 
ing boys trudge pass us shivering at the sudden change 
of temperature. 

And next, oh dear me! an endless parade of Sugar 
People : some very quaint brown-skinned Spaniards from 
Cuba, with wide-brimmed hats, bare feet and gay sashes 
around their waists. Juan (pronounced Huan) is the 
Cuban "Jack" who leads this procession; he and his 
brothers went out in the Cuban fields one day to cut down 
the tall sugar cane stalks, which other Cuban men then 
carried away on donkeys to the big sugar factories, where 
after days and weeks "things" happened to the sugar 
canes, until they became sugar; this was put in sacks 
and barrels, and brought to us by steamer, then by train. 
Several hundred persons will march around the table 
with our sugar, most of them Cubans who have never 
been in the United States before. But Juan knows all 
about us, because one of our Missionaries ("Sefiorita." 
he calls her) teaches his little son, Juan, and his daughter 
Juanita, in our very own mission school there. 

By this time you will say: "Oh, please don't let's have 
any more people serve us this morning, I'm going to be 
dreadfully late for school, already!" 

But your wise mother insists on bread and butter and 

• See page 63 "Children in Bondage," by Edwin Markham. 



J ACK-0F- ALL-TRADES 1 7 

an egg, so Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! In come fifty or 
more Bread-Providers, including the Danish prairie 
farmer who raised the wheat, the American miller who 
ground it, the Lithuanian sacker who sacked it, the Polish 
weaver who wove the sack, the English shipper who 
shipped it, the German yeast cake men who made the 
yeast. Next come the Butter-Makers, — the farmer who 
owns the cow, the milker, the churner, the grocer, and 
several dozen helpers ! And last of all the Egg-People, — 
the farmer's wife who owned the hens, the boys who 
found the eggs, the factory girls who made the egg boxes, 
the grocer and the delivery man. 

"Now, thank goodness, they are all gone I" you say, as 
you hastily crack the egg-shell! But immediately will 
come trooping in another procession of the Salt- and 
Pepper-Makers; and then, because you are too civilized 
to eat with your fingers, or cook with a bent stick, along 
will march an endless line of Silver-Knife-Fork-and- 
Spoon-Makers ; Cup-Saucer-and-Plate-Potters ; Napkin- 
and-Table-cloth- Weavers ; some "glass" boys who made 
the tumblers, the egg cups and the salt and pepper hold- 
ers; miners who got us tin, factory "hands" who made 
the tin into pots and pans and spoons for kitchen use; 
other miners who got us iron, foundry-workers who made 
the iron into steel, stove men who made it into stoves, 
and last of all, lumber- jacks who cut down giant trees 
from the woods, and furniture-makers who fashioned the 
logs into chairs and tables and side-boards! 

Isn't it overcoming to know that for a simple little ten- 
minute breakfast it has taken thousands antj thousands 
of Jacks-of -all-Trades? If they really and truly should 
walk around your dining-room table, your mother would 
get very much provoked at the tremendous dust they 
would raise and the muddy foot-prints they would leave ; 



18 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

and after they were all gone, I very much fear she 
would find that foot-prints were about all they did leave 
behind them, — for don't you imagine the carpet would be 
worn entirely threadbare? 

But besides what you wear, made by thousands of 
workers, and what you eat, prepared by still more thou- 
sands of people, there is 

THE LITTLE HOUSE YOU LIVE IN ! 

A house isn't just a collection of stone, brick, wood and 
plaster, with a nickel doorbell and a brass number on 
the porch, is it? No, a house is also: 

Windows, 

Curtains, 

Wall Paper, 

Stoves, 

Furniture, 

Carpets, 

Books, 

Pictures, 

Dishes, 

Glasses, 

Mirrors, 

Tinware, 

Electric wires, 

Gas pipes, 
Water pipes, 
and ever so many other little every-day conveniences like 
hooks and nails, curtain-rods, coat-hangers, telephones, 
carpet sweepers, victrolas, pianos, etc. — each one of which 
uses a hundred or more people for the making of it. That 
means about fifty thousand unseen people who work in a 
circle around you to give you the little house you call 
"home." 

But these three every-day jobs of dressing, and eating, 



JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 19 

and living at home aren't all there is in life, of course, for 
there are such things as toys and trains and trolley cars, 
boats and automobiles and bicycles, office buildings and 
churches and schools, streets and pavements and sewers, 
railroad tracks and telegraph poles and fire-alarm boxes, 
all of which have to be made, put in place and kept in 
order by scores of busy Jacks-of-all-Trades. 

And holidays! 

Oh, you have no idea how many people a holiday keeps 
busy! 

Once we each believed in a dear old Santa Claus who 
worked all the year round, up at the North Pole, making 
toys and dolls and Christmas candy, which Mrs. Santy 
tied up in neat packages, and which the prancing reindeer 
brought to our chimney-tops ! Sometimes I wish this nice 
old myth were true, for it is so really jolly and merry — 
you just can't picture grinning old Santa Claus with a 
headache or a backache or a "nervous breakdown" from 
rushing, can you ? But there are some real Santa Clauses 
whom we never see, not the jolly, merry kind for he or 
she is a Jack-of-all-Trades, who drops into bed at night 
with swollen, aching feet and tired, buzzing head because 
December 25th is drawing near. They are factory 
"hands," sales' clerks, bundle wrappers, delivery men, 
candy manufacturers, who would not be nearly so tired 
if you and all your family would "Shop Early," and then 
let them have the street cars to sit in on their way home. 
I have a feeling that the Friend of Little Children whose 
birthday comes on that date must feel rather sad about 
What He sees; one4ialf of His children all thrilled and 
excited over new toys and dolls and boxes of candy ; the 
other half all cross and tired and sick from getting these 
things ready. 

As for Easter, I couldn't begin to count all the Jack-of- 



20 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

all-Trades who are kept busy as busy can be then. Some 
of them have to do such silly, slimpsy things : making glass 
eggs, pasting fuzzy yellow chickens, shaping plaster rab- 
bits — foolish, useless articles that have the strangest way 
of disappearing the week after Easter, and nobody misses 
them! Yet I don't believe anyone but the Risen Lord 
Himself knows of all the busy, busy hands making lace 
collars and frills and fancy ribbons and artificial flowers 
and gloves and neckties, so that on Easter Sunday, while 
one-half of His followers kneel in church, gorgeous in 
fine new clothes, the other half are probably in bed, 
too tired and listless to move as they hear the church 
bells ringing. Like Mary in the garden on that first Eas- 
ter morning, they, too, can say : "They have taken away 
my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." 

So altogether, living isn't at all a simple matter, is it? 
There is one verse in the Bible that will always be 
packed with meaning for those of us who have just 
learned the world's secret: "None of us liveth unto 
himself." 

If Comfortable People need Working People to keep 
them comfortable, then don't you think that Working 
People need something more from Comfortable People 
than just "pay" in cold, every-day money? I do! I 
think they need to have those of us who are comfort- 
able understand how we get the things we eat and wear 
— the dangers, the discomforts and troubles that make 
up their lives. One can't know without being told which 
is the reason for this story book, written specially for 
you! 

You will be very sorry about some things you read. 
You will be sorry that while you are comfortably going 
to school, or comfortably playing afterwards, so many 
other little children (one child in every forty) has to 



J ACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 2 1 

give up school and playtimes entirely, to be busy, rushing 
Jacks-of-all-Trades all day long. That will not seem right 
to you. It is not right, either. 

But, unfortunately, there are some very Comfortable 
Business Men whose hearts have gone fast asleep, while 
their fat, bulging pocketbooks have kept wide awake! 
To make these pocketbooks even fatter, they employ 
grown-up Jacks-of-all-Trades at wages so small that there 
isn't enough to feed or clothe the hungry, cold little sons 
and daughters at home. So then these very very Com- 
fortable Business Men invite the little sons and daughters 
to work hard all day, for tiny sums of money which help 
the grown-up workers buy the necessary food and 
clothes. But they forget! They forget that, while they, 
themselves, are becoming very, very — oh, Far Too Com- 
fortable, little Jack-of -all-Trades is growing up stunted, 
tired, ignorant, wicked and mad at the world. They for- 
get, because it is pleasant to feel Comfortable and Im- 
portant. 

But you and I will not forget! I have told you the 
World's Secret, and you will grow up remembering the 
Unseen Workers who keep you comfortable. I think every 
evening this year you will remember to pray the prayer 
at the end of this chapter. 

Then, when you are grown up into Important Business 
Men and Women yourselves, you will want to say to 
Jack-of-all-Trades : "Do let's all be Comfortable together, 
both you and 1 1" 

And you will plan ways of doing it ! I know you will ! 
Then little Jacks-of-all-Trades can take time to be little 
school-boys and girls once more, and all over America 
we will all be saying: "None of us liveth unto himself 
.... but unto the Lord." 



22 



JACK-OF-ALL-TEADES 

Hg Prayer 




Our Father which art in Heaven, I thank Thee 
for my dear Father and Mother, my happy home 
and my good times. There are many children in this 
land who do not know Thee and who have no good 
times at all; they must live in dark, uncomfortable 
homes, and work hard every day to earn money for 
food and clothes, with no time to play. Wilt Thou 
bless and keep them and may they learn to know and 
love Thee. 

Dear Friend of Little Children, please show me 
how to be friendly and helpful to these others in 
every way I possibly can, and may Thy Kingdom 
come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. 
AMEN. ' 



II 

"THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT" 

This is the House that Jack built 

This is the dust that lay in the House that Jack built. 

This is the baby that rolled in the dust 

that lay in the House that Jack built. 

This is the sister who "minded" the baby 
that rolled in the dust 
that lay in the House that Jack built. 

This is the mother, all tired and forlorn, 
who called for the sister 
who "minded" the baby 
that rolled in the dust 
that lay in the House that Jack built. 

This is the father, toiling and worn, 

who gave rent to the mother, all tired and forlorn, 

who called for the sister 

who "minded" the baby 

that rolled in the dust 

that lay in the House that Jack built. 

This is the landlord who took with scorn 

the rent which the father, toiling and worn, 
gave to the mother, all tired and forlorn, 
brought by the sister who "minded" the baby 
that rolled in the dust 
that lay in the House that Jack built. 

BEFORE you get through with this chapter you 
will have met all these people who live in the 
House-that- Jack-built : the baby, the sister, the 
father and the mother, but I think first of all I'll intro- 
duce you to the Landlord and get over with it — for he 

23 



24 JACK-OF- ALL-TRADES 

isn't very nice ! Lots of Landlords aren't, and then again, 
any number of them are perfectly splendid, and ever so 
human. I suppose you know that a Landlord is a person 
who owns a building and rents it to someone else to live 
in, at so much a month. If you don't pay, why, out you 
go! That is business, and quite as business has to be. 

But Landlords much too often don't care about spend- 
ing money; only about getting it. And even when the 
roof begins to leak, and pipes burst, and the banister 
gets wobbly, and wall paper peels off in a discouraged 
way, and the tenant says: "Oh, Mr. Landlord, won't 
you please repair your roof and your waterpipes and 
your banister!" Even then some Landlords shake their 
heads "no" because they hope the broken places will 
last a little longer. It doesn't matter to them that leaky 
roofs and burst pipes bring colds and coughs, or broken 
banisters cause falls and sprains. 

I dare say your own father knows something about 
how true this is, so you can imagine if Landlords who 
own nice attractive houses which Comfortable People 
rent are unwilling to make repairs, then Landlords who 
own ugly, unattractive houses, which some Working 
People rent are even more unwilling ! That is one reason 
why poor Jack-of -all-Trades almost always has to live in 
a house where the paint is cracked off, the wallpaper 
is peeling away, the windows are broken, the floors are 
rickety, and the gas-jets crooked and dim. 

Nobody likes a horrid home, not even Jack-of-all- 
Trades, who is away all day making things to keep us 
comfortable. 

It is strange, but when busy people have a leisure mo- 
ment or two to sit down and "pretend," they very often 
begin "building castles in Spain" — dream houses, where 



THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT 25 

they picture themselves living just as they have always 
wanted to live. Rich people think up marvelous palaces 
of marble and tapestry set in big green parks, guarded 
by enormous gates and high fences; studious people 
think up beautiful libraries lined with bookcases full of 
rare books and lovely pictures; city people dream of a 
cottage in the lovely country; and country people dream 
of brick houses in the city with trolley cars clashing and 
clanging before their front doors. We all do it, some 
time or other. And Jack-of -all-Trades is exactly like 
everybody else, only he knows better than any of us that 
the horrid part of dream houses comes when you stop 
pretending, then bang! the really truly house you live in 
looks shabbier and dingier than ever. 

The trouble with Jack-of -all-Trades is that he has to 
live as near as he can to the place where he works, and 
if you will only recall what most factories look like, you 
can easily picture what dirty, uninteresting surroundings 
Jack has. When he looks up at the smoky sky he can 
see only great chimney-tops, like giant exclamation 
points, saying continually: "Look how busy we are in- 
side this mill I" When he looks across at his neighbors 
he sees only dirty windows with torn, sagging curtains, 
and when he looks down at the street he sees rough little 
boys playing rough games, or untidy little girls "mind- 
ing" dirty, wriggling babies. 

I think it is then that Jack-of -all-Trades begins "pre- 
tending" the simplest of all dream houses: a tiny little 
bit of a place — oh, just a pill-box of a house, with a 
front yard the size of a pocket handkerchief, and a back 
yard just big enough for one of those merry-go-round 
clothes trees, under which his babies can play on green 
grass. Perhaps he is unselfish enough to "pretend" a 
whole street of such neat little homes, one for each of 



26 JACK-OF- ALL-TRADES 

his neighbors — a jolly little row of happy, clean homes, 
with a really-truly tree at each curb, with really-truly 
leaves making shadows on the sidewalks. 

But even that simple, modest dream is an impossi- 
bility in crowded cities, where there is never an extra 
inch of room on any street. No, indeed, smoky, dingy 
factories rub elbows with equally smoky, dingy buildings 
called "Tenements," in each room of which lives many 
and many a Jack-of -all-Trades. 

A tenement building is just as though you took street 
after street of tiny little pill-box houses and piled them 
up on top of each other, story on story, like child's 
blocks, until you had a tall ramshackle building, then you 
said: "Come on, Jack-of -all-Trades, choose what floor 
you want your room on. Call it < home > and make the 
best of it. At least, it's near your factory." He knows 
that, for he sees the sooty smoke coming in his windows, 
making everything ugly and grimy. 

So when you see a dingy, horrid tenement, packed 
with shabby, dirty people, you must never say, you 
mustn't even think: "Oh, well, I guess it's good enough 
for them ! I don't suppose they know any better' 9 

Remember instead, that there may be a neat little pre- 
tend-home tucked away in the dream corner of their 
minds, but that meanwhile they are too poor to rent 
better rooms, and too tired and busy all day to keep their 
shabby rooms very spick and span. Doubtless they feel 
a little mad at their Landlord who charges them so much 
and does so little; but to be quite fair, doubtless the 
Landlord gets mad at them for abusing the few rooms 
they have. For once there was a good Landlord who built 
a model tenement with a bathroom for every family, and 
windows in every room. Oh, a very neat place! Then 



THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT 27 

in moved an Italian family (it might have been a Rus- 
sian or a Polish or a Hungarian family, of course) who 
never had seen a bath-tub before, so they kept the coal 
in it! That blackened and scratched the sides, and made 
the good Landlord wish he had never been good! But 
along came our Mrs. Missionary and took plenty of time 
to explain all about bath-tubs, and baths every day, and 
where coal should be kept, and now both the Landlord 
and the family are entirely happy. 

But you must become acquainted with the Salamontes, 
who lived in a rickety old tenement whose Landlord was 
really only a Pocketbook, into which Rent disappeared, 
and a Voice that thundered "no" when you asked him to 
do anything. 

To begin with, the Salamontes had not always lived in 
America. Like a great many other Jacks-of -all-Trades, 
they sailed over here in a boat with wild hopes of be- 
coming exceedingly rich in a very little while. 

They came from Italy, from a quaint old city called 
Naples. Perhaps you have seen pictures of the funny, 
narrow streets that walk up the hillsides where the poorer 
people live. Ropes stretched from window to window 
across these narrow streets are clothes-lines on which the 
gay family washing is hung to dry. The Salamontes' 
clothes were never all washed at once, because there 
weren't enough to go around twice, so Michelina and 
Angelina had to borrow their sisters' clothes while their 
own were washed — and Theresa and Marietta went to 
bed ! That was because Michelina and Angelina did more 
important work. They went every morning with Tony to 
a little farm, outside Naples, where they picked vege- 
tables which they stuffed in saddlebags hung on each side 
of their donkey. Then they led the donkey back into the 



28 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

city and peddled the vegetables. They hardly earned 
enough to live, for even macaroni and black bread cost 
money, and counting the Bambino, there were eight in 
the family. 

So one day, Papa Salamonte, who wore earrings in his 
ears and always used his elbows when he talked, said: 
"Next week, Tony and I, we sail for America to make 
our fortune. Then I send for you all." 

Well! 

It was like dropping lumps of ice down their backs. 

Theresa cried. She was so little, and got scared eas- 
ily: "In a big boat?" she sobbed. 

"And how soon will you send for us ?" asked Angelina, 
thrilled to think of leaving the stubborn little donkey 
behind. 

"Oh, six months, maybe!" said Papa Salamonte, 
shrugging his shoulders and making gestures with his 
elbows which meant : "When once I get there money will 
pour into my pockets !" 

"In America they wear hats, girls do!" Michelina 
whispered softly, dreaming a lovely dream. 

But the day Papa Salamonte and Tony said good-bye 
nobody thought of hats or donkeys, or even money, it 
seemed so dreadful to lose them. Everybody cried, the 
Bambino loudest of all, although he didn't know what 
it was all about — but when there was crying to be done 
he certainly considered it his duty to help ! 

Then they all began waiting — waiting for the money, 
so they could go to America. None of them knew how to 
read or write, so whenever they got a letter from Papa 
Salamonte they all ran over to the Priest to hear him read 
it out loud. The letters did not sound at all gay. Money 
did not lie around on the streets of America ; it was even 



THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT 29 

hard to earn it. Tony was working for a Padrone who 
gave him a push-cart full of bananas, which he trundled 
through the streets calling "Banan' ! Banan' !" But even 
on lucky days when he sold every single banana the Pa- 
drone only gave him a very little money, and made him 
sleep in a shanty off his house, where the bananas were 
ripening, and then Tony had to buy poor food from him 
at a big price. Papa Salamonte himself was working on 
a street, repairing trolley-car tracks. It was hard work, 
but he was saving money slowly — far too slowly. 

Angelina began to feel that she and the donkey were 
to be inseparable friends for all of her life ! I forgot to 
tell you that they all lived and slept and ate in one room 
— the donkey, too. But he did not bray about it to the 
other donkeys who sold vegetables, because most of them 
lived right in with their families, too ! 

Then a letter came telling them that a queer old uncle of 
Mrs. Salamonte's had died, leaving her a stocking stuffed 
full of paper liras. A lira is worth twenty cents, and when 
the priest helped her count this unexpected fortune she 
found the old man had actually saved enough to send 
them all to America. She was so happy she spent several 
dollars for twelve big, tall candles to be burned in the 
cathedral, and gave the Priest money to pray for the soul 
of such a good uncle. Then she rolled up the family 
bedding (tucking inside an old candlestick and some lace 
doilies she had made years before), and when the next 
boat sailed for America six round-eyed persons, with 
shawls over their heads and ear-rings shining in their 
ears, were on deck, looking their last at the quaint old 
streets that walk up hill, and at Mt. Vesuvius, with a 
cloud always near its summit. 

The next twelve days were horrible. People who come 
to America from over the sea are called immigrants, and 



30 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

because they are poor they can only afford to live in the 
part of the ship that rocks the most. Michelina, who 
watched hard for two whole days, said she was quite 
sure the front end of the boat flapped one way and the 
back end the other way. But on the third day everybody 
was so sick it was of no consequence what happened to 
either end, until the glorious day when they landed at 
Ellis Island. Here doctors and various kinds of govern- 
ment inspectors make sure that immigrants are "healthy 
and wealthy and wise" enough to enter America and be 
no trouble to us. The Salamontes had lived out doors 
so much that in spite of sleeping eight in a room (not 
to mention the donkey) they were all healthy; and Mrs. 
Salamonte had some of her uncle's money stowed care- 
fully away in her stocking, so that when the inspectors 
saw her wage-earning husband and son frantically waving 
on the other side of the railing they smilingly "passed" 
the whole family, and I will leave you to picture the 
happy meeting. 

The next time we see them they will be in the Tene- 
ment-House-that- Jack-Built, where Papa Salamonte had 
rented two rooms. It sounded sumptuous after one 
room in Italy. There was no donkey to kick around and 
bray, either ; so when they all began to feel a little poor, 
after buying a supply of second-hand beds, tables, chairs 
and dishes, and the Rent began to scare them, then they 
decided to take two boarders to sleep there daytimes. 
These were Italian men who worked all night long in a 
factory nearby, and slept all day in the same bed where 
Angelina and Michelina slept at night. It was not very 
clean to have them do that, nor was it very nice to have 
them snoring away while cooking and eating and living 
were going on, but the extra money did seem so very 
necessary to the poor family! 



THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT 31 

Rent is a strange thing ; it seems to come due so much 
oftener than once a month. Not that it really does, but 
Mrs. Salamonte never could save quite enough money 
from week to week to pay the Landlord. One month she 
actually had nothing at all saved! That was the time 
when Tony gave up trundling his banana push cart and 
lost a whole week's wages looking for a place in a fac- 
tory. The Landlord grunted and grumbled, but for a 
wonder actually let the rent go over for another month ; 
not because he was kind, though, but because the Sala- 
montes had not once complained, like former tenants, 
about the fact that the inner bedroom had no windows 
at all, or that the ceilings were so cracked that when the 
Frascati family living upstairs walked around, bits of 
plaster fell down on the Salamonte family below! At 
first, they were so frolicsome and happy at being together 
once more, that the falling plaster actually seemed funny 
to them ! They made jokes about it ; once when quite a 
big piece fell in his soup Papa Salamonte laughed till 
he cried, and said most men had to buy soup-bones, ha ! 
ha ! but their Landlord included them in the Rent. 

But before another Rent day came around a dreadful 
thing happened: Papa Salamonte was run over by a 
street-car! He was bending over, cracking brick pave- 
ment loose from the tracks, and did not hear the motor- 
man's gong; then, looking up, dazed at the car suddenly 
on top of him, he was too slow in getting out of the way. 
An ambulance came and rushed him to the hospital, but 
there was no hope for any one so torn and tattered and 
mangled. When the frightened Salamontes stood around 
his bed, he managed to move his poor crushed arm over 
to his pay envelope: "Rent!" he gasped; and then, be- 
cause he was such a dear, jolly soul he mustered up a 
tiny smile in spite of the pain : "Maka de Landlord fixa 



32 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

dat ceilings!" he whispered, and that was the very last 
thing he said before he died. 

The poor widow Salamonte made mourning earrings 
by tying some black crepe over the gold earrings of her 
girlhood ; then she called Theresa who was "minding" the 
baby and gave her the last precious money to take to the 
Landlord for Rent. Then she knew something must be 
done, and done quickly, for only Tony was left now to 
bring home wages. 

She soon began understanding what all the other fam- 
ilies in this House-that- Jack-Built were so busy about 
day and night. Long before she had learned the families' 
names, both she and Angelina named the doors they 
passed on the long climb up to their floor. 

There was the Door of the Nut Family, inside which 
the Cosenzas cracked walnuts all day, from six in the 
morning to ten at night, removing the nut meats, until 
their poor fingers were red and puffed and torn. The 
four-year-old boy had to work, too, and even poor Mr. 
Cosenza, who was dreadfully sick in bed with a cough, 
sometimes bit open nuts with his teeth for an hour or 
two. That is one reason, by the way, why your own 
mother does not dare buy nuts already cracked, she can- 
not tell where they were opened or whose sick, soiled 
fingers touched them. Sometimes Mrs. Cosenza would 
get mad at the baby and slap his cheeks because he kept 
dropping asleep and only earned five cents a day. "He 
coulda to maka ten centa, so he coulda," she boasted to 
our missionary once! 

On that same floor was the Door of the Necktie Family. 
Mr. Girgenti had been sick in bed for years with a disease 
called tuberculosis, he was just able to help fold the 
pretty silks over the padded lining, while the rest of the 
family tacked in the folds, stitched on the store labels 



THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT 33 

and pressed them. You can imagine how they had to 
rush, for they only got fifteen cents for lining, turning 
and pressing a dozen neckties. There was always plenty 
of work for them to do, for I have heard that New York 
City alone needs half a million neckties every day — and 
even more at Christmas and Easter. 

On the next floor above, Mrs. Salamonte had often 
passed the Door of the Lace Family. Stitch, stitch, stitch 
they crocheted, pell-mell, hour after hour. Mrs. Sala- 
monte thought she could earn Rent money by crocheting, 
for she remembered the precious lace doilies she had 
brought over from Italy. So she hurried up to her own 
floor, got out the thread and needle, and crocheted day 
and night, until her eyes simply would not stay open and 
her fingers grew stiff. Angelina stayed home from school 
all the week, until finally one beautiful piece was done. 
It was so lovely that Mrs. Salamonte was proud to carry 
it down to Mrs. Belluni on the floor below. "How much 
do I get for a piece this size ?" she asked in Italian. 

Mrs. Belluni used her elbows in replying: "Thirty 
cents !" The elbows meant : "Oh, it's a hopeless way to 
earn rent money. The man who buys my lace gives me 
so little for it, but when he sells it to fine ladies — ah ! — 
Big! Big price!" 

Poor Mrs. Salamonte walked slowly and sadly upstairs 
with her thirty cents, and knew lace would not help her 
any. Then she passed the door of the Cagliari family; 
she went inside. They were making pink sateen roses. 
Five little girls and one little boy were working at a long 
table with their mother, while a very unbusinesslike baby 
wasted precious time crawling around on the dirty floor. 
But the seven other members of the Cagliari family sat 
with their eyes fastened to the table in front of them, 
where heaps of pink sateen petals were piled. With swift 



34 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

movements, they each used the little finger of one hand 
to dip and paste, while with the other fingers they 
crumpled two or three bits of cloth about a wire, for a 
center; then they strung on five petals, each with a dab 
of paste from the little finger. They shaped and patted 
the petals into a cup-like nest, slipped the wire into a 
hollow green tube, and hooked the finished roses to dry 
on a line in front of them. Rose after rose, rose after 
rose, — the pile grew amazingly fast. 

"How much you maka?" asked Mrs. Salamonte. 

"Eight cent for 144 roses," said Mrs. Cagliari, not 
taking time to look up. "When we all worka, we maka 
four dollar a weeka." 

Four dollars sounded better than thirty cents to Mrs. 
Salamonte, so she hurried around to the flower factory 
and arranged with the boss to do home work. He was 
glad to get her, for it was near Easter time, when every- 
one wants new hats, and flowers were to be in style that 
year. He gave her a huge box of forget-me-nots to 
make up. 

It looked so pretty and so easy; just running a wire 
through the blue cambric and dipping some paste on the 
end where the yellow center fitted. But nothing is much 
fun to do when you have to keep it up hour after hour, 
day after day. 

The boss did not pay as much for forget-me-nots as for 
roses — only three cents for 144 flowers, so it seemed end- 
less work to earn four dollars. Angelina, Michelina and 
Marietta rushed home from school and worked till late 
at night. Theresa lugged the baby in from the dusty hall 
and actually taught him how to make a forget-me-not, — 
it looked as well as anybody's. 

"After all, he's most three years old," she laughed. So 



THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT 35 

after that they made him work, too. They stopped calling 
him Bambino (baby) and gave him his real name, 
Giovanni (pronounced Jovanni), which is the Italian way 
of saying "John," — so he is, I'm afraid, our tiniest Jack- 
of-all-Trades. 

Whenever you see the pretty blue forget-me-nots which 
can be bought so cheaply at Easter-time at the five-and- 
ten-cent store, remember him, won't you ? Remember his 
dear little brown eyes, that were becoming crossed from 
watching thin little wires go through little blue circles; 
remember his sleepy pout and the fact that he could only 
make 195 flowers in a day, which put four cents extra 
every night in the Salamonte purse, to help buy food and 
clothes and pay rent. 

The Salamontes have worked in the House-that- Jack- 
Built fully four years, and in all that time neither the 
plaster, nor the paint, nor the dim gas-jets have been 
repaired. All four little girls and Giovanni stayed home 
from school all day finally, and it was there that our 
Missionary found them when she went a-visiting in the 
House-that- Jack-Built. 

"Oh, how pretty you all look!" she exclaimed when 
she first came into the grimy room, because at a glance, 
the children did look very sweet with great bunches of 
dainty blue flowers everywhere. 

But Mrs. Salamonte who had lost all her jolly smile 
said, bitterly: "No, Signora, I wish God not maka de 
real f orgessamenots for us to copy !" 

Then our Missionary saw. She saw four dear little 
Italian girls with tired white faces, all the play and joy 
gone out of them, their heavy eyes seeing only tiny blue 
flowers and wires, wires, wires. She knew they had no 
time for school now, their teacher had told her about 



36 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

them. She saw little cross-eyed Giovanni, pale and wan 
and far too tiny. 

"Giovanni is leetle because he maka de forgessamenots 
so long time. Sits and sits he does, and he keepa so 
small/' 

Our Missionary who had just been visiting the families 
who "did" nuts, neckties, lace and roses on her way up 
stairs, sighed a deep sigh as she remembered the 
stuffy rooms smelling of garlic and of people tightly 
packed in, she remembered the dark, unaired halls, the 
rickety floors and the busy rushing families making use- 
less neckties, lace collars and silly artificial flowers for 
some of us to wear at Easter. And it seemed to her, as 
it seems to me, that those tired boys and girls were paying 
a very, very big Rent for that unattractive House-that- 
Jack-Built. 

She knew that what was true in "Little Italy," the part 
of the town where the Italian tenements were, was also 
true in "Little Russia" and "Little Poland," where the 
Russians and Poles and Jews lived. She knew that one 
child out of every forty is working for its living, and that 
thirteen million children are outside of Sunday-school; 
and it made her walk faster, work harder, and love deeper 
because there was so much to be done to help the dear 
people who live in the House-that- Jack-Built. 



Ill 

"LITTLE JACK HORNER" 

Little Jack Horner 

Sat in a corner 

Pulling out basting threads; 

He pulled with his thumb, which helped him some, 

As he dreamed of pillows and beds. 

BUT it was such a long, long time before the basting 
threads were sewed into that dress, and there are 
so many stories tucked in the gathers of it, and so 
many Jack-of-all-Trades working busily that I want to 
take you on a little journey — let's calls it "The Trip of 
the Cotton Dress," on which we will make four stop-offs. 

1. "Way Down South in Dixie" 
Cotton dresses begin being cotton dresses "way down 
south in Dixie," where they grow on bushes! For Dixie- 
land is the "land ob cotton," where Mammy Chloe, who 
is black as ink, and her four little piccaninnies, who are 
dreadfully black, too, spend all day long picking cotton 
bolls out in the cotton fields. Mammy Chloe wears a red 
bandanna handkerchief twisted around her head and tied 
in two funny knobs in front : so the little piccaninnies tie 
red handkerchiefs around their heads, too, and when you 
look at the cotton fields you see a red head bobbing up 
and down every few minutes, until you want to nick- 
name these small Jack-of-all-Trades "Johnny-jump-ups!" 

37 



\ 



38 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

Watching them, it looks rather easy ; nothing to it, but 
picking up fluffy bolls and piling them in a great bag ; but 
you wouldn't enjoy doing it long — for the sun gets very 
hot on your head, and your back gets very tired, and your 
tongue gets very thirsty : long before noon you would be 
saying, piccaninny fashion, "Oh, Mammy Chloe, 'pears 
lak I bin a-pickin' powerful long time, ain't it ever gwine 
ter be night?" 

Each child has a bag fitted to his shoulders to trail 
down his back, way down to his feet it hangs, and he 
thrusts the cotton into gaps in the bag. Up and down 
through the fields he crawls, dragging his bag after him. 
A quarter of a million children in Texas alone, lots and 
lots of them white children, too, of course. One-fifth of 
all the cotton in the world is grown in Texas. They even 
boast down there that the crops of their State would 
make a suit of clothes for every person in the world! 
I don't know how true that is, but I do know that many 
of these cotton pickers are entirely too tiny and young 
to be out there all day working, both little Negro piccanin- 
nies and little foreign Jacks-of -all-Trades, many of them 
Bohemians. "Johann" is the way of saying "Jack" in 
Bohemia, and it is too bad that a Bohemian father's in- 
come in Texas depends on the number of busy little 
Johanns he has out in the cotton fields. 

"Even babies of four, properly prodded, and losing no 
time with teddy bears or afternoon naps, can pick from 
six to eight pounds a day ; some boy of five, not fooling 
away his hours in a kindergarten, can pick thirty pounds. 
An older child of ten can pick one hundred pounds. 
Think of how many monotonous bendings and stuffings 
must go to the bagging of one hundred pounds of a fluffy 
mass like cotton ! Think of the emptiness of a mind en- 




The training, of hand and 
eye must supplement "'book 
learning* to make a well 
rounded man. 




LITTLE JACK HORNER 39 

gaged in gathering together this nothingness all day long, 
from blistering August to bitter December."* 

For the trouble is that when the little black children do 
nothing but pick cotton for weeks and months and years 
they grow up without knowing how to read or write, or 
how to do anything else but pick cotton. And, of course, 
our beautiful America needs colored people who are as 
well educated as you and I are going to be when we get 
all grown up. That is the reason why the churches have 
schools in the cotton field country where these little black 
Jacks-of-the-Cotton-Trade can learn, not only how to 
read and write, but also how to do other things like 
cooking and sewing, if they are girls, or carpentering and 
farming, if they are boys. The grown-up people in our 
churches call these schools industrial schools; which 
means schools where children are taught carpentering and 
blacksmithing, cooking and sewing, as well as many other 
things; when the children who have studied in these 
schools get old enough to work they work honestly and 
well, because they have been taught how. 

So much for the first stage of our "Trip of the Cotton 
Dress." 

2. "Thy Templed Hills" 

You remember those words in "America" : 

I love thy rocks and rills 
Thy woods and templed hills f 

Way up in the mountains of South Carolina you will 
find just such hills where there stood a certain Lonely- 
House-that-Had-No-Neighbors ! Tucked in among trees, 
with a mountain fairly sitting in the front yard and 
another in the back yard, the little House was lonely, as 
lonely could be. Nothing liked to grow on the steep hill- 
sides; potatoes were grouchy, corn and oats seemed to 

*See p. 214, Children in Bondage, by Edwin Markham. 



40 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

hate it, — in fact, it was all the poor Mountaineer Farmer 
could do to stick on there himself ! One day he actually 
fell out of his own cornfield, it was so very steep ! 

So there wasn't much to eat in the house, and it kept 
Jack and Jill and their mother busy all day long, going 
up the hill to fetch a pail of water, "dipping" tallow can- 
dles, curing bacon, weaving cloth, knitting stockings and 
doing all the other things you have to do when you live 
in a Lonely-House-that-Has-No-Neighbors, no store, no 
anything, in fact, not even roads. 

One day a man rode by on horseback. He had entirely 
lost his way, so he cantered up to the door of the Lonely 
House and hallooed. 

Jack and Jill shyly edged to the open door to see the 
Smiling Stranger who asked how he might get back on 
the main road, somehow he had lost his way. 

At the sound of voices the Sunbonnet Baby and 
Sookie came bashfully around to the front of the house 
to see what was "up," and Delaware and Tennessee came 
over from the cornfield. 

When the Stranger saw all these sturdy children he 
suddenly decided he wasn't in a hurry at all! In fact, 
he had plenty of time; and asked for a dipper of water 
as he swung off his horse. 

As he drank it he said to the farmer and his wife : "I 
reckon you-all must have a mighty hard time working this 
farm and feeding these fine children, eh ?" 

That was enough to get the farmer started on his fav- 
orite disgruntled story about how hard it was to work his 
particular God-forsaken, hilly, desolate, etc., etc., etc., etc., 
farm! It took a whole hour, which was exactly what 
the Smiling Stranger wanted. He had plenty of time 
now! 



LITTLE JACK HORNER 41 

"Well, that's too bad !" he said, when the farmer stopped 
a minute to light his corncob pipe. "But I know a place 
where you can easily go to live and remedy all that: a 
place where your children will have a school, good neigh- 
bors, lovely surroundings, a church and a little easy, 
pleasant employment for each one of you, where both 
you and they can earn enough money to pay for a little 
home and buy pretty clothes." Then he talked for an 
hour! 

You can just imagine this sounded like Heaven to the 
lonely, discouraged farmer and his eager children. 

"Where is this wonderful place?" they asked breath- 
lessly. 

"Why, it's the very town where I live," said the 
Stranger. "I'm interested in a cotton mill there. It will 
be like play for all these six strong children of yours to 
go to my mill every day. They will like it, and there will 
be good pay. The more children you have working in 
my mill, the less rent you have to pay for your house." 

"Do tell !" gasped the astonished farmer. "I reckon it 
must be a fine place." 

You should have seen them all put their heads together 
as they talked it over ! Before the stranger left, the ex- 
cited family had gladly promised to come to his town and 
work in his mill. But as he rode away there was a cruel 
smile on the lips of the Smiling Stranger, which nobody 
saw but the Friend of Little Children. He hated it. But 
the Lonely Family did not know; they were so wildly 
happy that nobody slept a wink that night, and a week 
later found them in the Stranger's town. 

At first they were so thrilled at being in a town where 
there were lots of other houses and plenty of noise and 
bustle at noon, that they did not notice what a desolate, 
hideous place it really was. 



42 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

There were a great many dirty, unpainted two-story 
shacks, each of which was inhabited by two families, and 
surrounded by a dismal yard, entirely sprinkled over 
with slag from the factory furnaces. Once in a while 
somebody, who still had a cheerful soul, tried to grow 
some flowers, but always somebody else, who had forgot- 
ten all about cheerfulness and beauty, would sweep all 
the rubbish from indoors right out on top of the flower 
beds, — such rubbish as ashes, old rags, barrel hoops, 
decayed vegetables, chicken feathers, tin cans, pieces of 
dirty paper. There it lay, and nobody ever came to clean 
it away. There was no grass, either, and the very sun- 
shine was loaded down with soot and smoke belching 
from the factory chimneys. 

Into one of these gray, dingy shacks the Mountain 
family moved. It was not at all "cheerful," the way the 
Smiling Stranger had said it would be, and it was certainly 
very sooty. But Jack and Jill said it was nice at last not 
to be in a Lonely-House-that-Had-no-Neighbors, so for a 
while the excitement of seeing people everywhere made 
them forget to miss the pure, fresh sunshine of the mar- 
velous green mountains. They still had to go outdoors to 
"fetch a pail of water," it was not up the hill this time, 
but along a sidewalk gritty with slag from factory fur- 
nace. Their backyard was a large mud-puddle, over 
which hung a sagging clothesline, full of the washing of 
the "upstairs family." 

At twelve o'clock the factory whistles blew a terrific 
blast, and out rushed the crowd of cotton-mill workers. 
Tired-looking men, women and children, with faces white 
and solemn and shoulders sagging. Their hair, their 
clothes, their very eyelashes were covered with fine flakes 
of lint, wisps of cotton ; fibres of the great bolts of cotton 
they had been weaving inside the gates. 



LITTLE JACK HORNER 43 

"I reckon we-all will be among them tomorrow," Jack 
whispered to Jill, excited. 

"Oh, but some of us aren't old enough!" Jill said. 
"I'm 'leven, and you're ten, but the others is smaller, 
and Mammy says the factory only aims to take kids who 
are tweayulve I" 

Jack laughed. "Pappy says that ain't no 'count ! The 
Smiling Stranger told him to say as how we-all are 
tweayulve — and some of us older !" 

Jack and Jill snickered. It seemed a huge joke to them 
just then that the nice Stranger would so kindly let them 
lie about their ages so they could play in his factory, when 
he knew the Sunbonnet Baby was only five, and Sookie 
seven and the twins eight! They thought it was a joke 
that the mill owner was going to pay them each twenty 
cents a day, while their older, wiser mother would only 
get thirty-nine cents a day. They thought it was a joke 
to earn all that money just for "playing." 

But the next morning when the scream of the factory 
whistle shrieked and wailed at half past four, bidding 
everybody in Mill Town to get up in the dark, nothing 
seemed a huge joke to sleepy Jack and Jill! Hurrying 
half-dressed, unwashed, ill-fed, their whole family ran 
outdoors to join the slow, languid procession which 
dragged itself sleepily along toward the mill gates. 
The "boss" led them into the spinning room, a dread- 
fully hot, moist place, like a continual Turkish bath, 
which had to be kept that way so the cotton threads would 
always be limp and pliable. 

Jack was told he would be a "doffer." This meant he 
had to stand in a narrow lane of busy machinery, lift the 
full spools of cotton off the frames, and put back empty 
ones in their places. It was not hard work, but he kept 
feeling choked and blinded by the clouds of lint forever 



44 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

molting from the looms, and deafened by the jar and 
uproar of the giant machines, clashing, clanging, thunder- 
ing — weaving cotton for our cotton dresses. 

Tennessee, who was the eight-year-old boy twin, was 
to be a "sweeper," to sweep the lint from the floors. It 
was not long before he was powdered all over with this 
lint from the looms — it got into his eyes, and up his nose, 
and tickled in his throat. He began to wonder where the 
"fun" was in playing in a mill ! 

But Jill and the three other girls had the hardest jobs 
of all as "spinners." Penned in little narrow lanes, they 
had to look and leap and reach and tie broken threads 
among acres and acres of quickly moving looms. Always 
with the snow of choking lint in their scared faces and 
the loud thunder of clanking machinery in their dazed 
ears. 

"Oh, this ain't fun! I'm scart of catchin' my fingers 
in the wheels," sobbed the Sunbonnet Baby, for beside 
her worked a little girl with three fingers cut off already. 
"I don't like playin' this here game!" 

"Me, neither," shouted poor Jill. 

But the Smiling Stranger who had brought them down 
from the mountains with evil promises of cheerfulness, 
knew they would work eleven hours day after day until 
they dropped from exhaustion and were no good to him 
any more. Then he would go riding up to some other 
Lonely House in the mountains and lure away more chil- 
dren. It was nothing to him that Jack and Jill, Sookie 
and the Sunbonnet Baby, Tennessee and Delaware were 
doing one monotonous, dreary thing minute after minute ; 
abusing their eyes in watching the rushing threads, dwarf- 
ing their muscles in an eternity of tiresome movements, 
ruining their lungs by breathing flecks of flying cotton, 
often catching their fingers in the machinery, often fall- 



LITTLE JACK HORNER 45 

ing sick and even dying because damp, moist air and lint 
are so bad to breathe. 

I don't like to think that perhaps 40,000 little American 
children like Jack and Jill are employed in cotton mills, 
weaving cloth to make my cotton dresses, and bedspreads, 
and towels, and sheets, do you? I hate to think of all 
those children growing up in our beautiful America with- 
out school or playtime, or good health, don't you? 

The churches north and south hate it, too ! And every 
year ask us to send money to our mission schools in those 
mountains where the Lonely-Houses are, so that the 
mountain families can be taught not to go down to the 
mill towns. It is at these schools that some other Jack is 
taught things about a farm that his father never knew: 
how to plant one kind of vegetables one year, and another 
kind the next year, so enriching the soil. 

Isn't that worth while? 

As for some other Jill, oh, well ; it would take a whole 
book to tell what our church schools teach Jill about cook- 
ing, and sewing, and nursing and teaching — and how to 
be neighborly. So, maybe, some day not a mountain 
family will want to go to a mill town, and the com- 
fortable mill owners will have to pay mothers and fathers 
bigger wages, so their children can go to school and play. 
Then we won't have to think of the mill stage of our 
cotton dresses with a shudder. 

3. Making the Dress. 
After Negro mammies and piccaninnies have picked the 
cotton off the bushes, and hundreds of little Jacks and 
Jills have spun it into thread, and their grown-up parents 
have woven it into cloth and dyed it beautiful colors, 
then big bolts and bales of it are sent to factories in other 
cities. 



46 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

Here expert cutters cut it up into all sorts of shapes, 
rapid basters baste the various parts together, rushing 
sewers stitch up the seams on machines: sip! sip! one 
seam is done; sip! sip! another seam; g'lng! glng! the 
hem is in; g'rrr! g'rrr! the sleeves are in, and lo! one 
dress is finished all but sewing on the buttons and pulling 
out the basting threads. 

A garment factory is a busy, noisy place, full of 
whirring machinery and hurrying people, everything 
smelling of oil from the cogs and wheels of the ma- 
chinery and of dye from the materials. 

A great many people who make our clothes for us are 
Russian or Polish Jews. Ivan is one of them. That is 
the way to say Jack in Russian. 

Years ago he lived across the sea in Russia, but because 
he was "only" a Jew he was not allowed to go outside 
his village, and he was taxed so much that he did not have 
money enough to buy food. It is dreadfully cold in 
Russia, but even in winter his quaint old mother carried 
her laundry work down to the frozen river, cracked the 
ice, and washed everything through the ice hole, kneeling 
on the ice. Her hands got red and chapped and she nearly 
froze, and nobody cared — but Ivan. 

He didn't like it. He said he would go to America and 
get rich. But when he tried to get a permit to leave his 
village, they said no, he could not go, he must go in the 
Russian army and serve three years. When he asked the 
village authorities how his old mother would be sup- 
ported, nobody cared — but Ivan. Or, maybe, Rebekah, 
for she and Ivan were in love and would marry when 
they could afford it. 

Ivan knew about America. A boy could earn money 
there for an old mother and a sweetheart. So quietly 
one night he secretly slipped away, walking miles and 



LITTLE JACK HORNER 47 

miles into Germany, where he got a train, then a boat 
which brought him over the ocean to New York. 

Here he worked in a factory many years, making cotton 
dresses for you and me. He ate so little he got thin, but 
that did not trouble him, for every penny saved meant 
that he could send for those two dear ones in Russia. 
But when he finally had enough, Rebekah wrote that she 
could come, but his dear old mother had died. 

He and Rebekah were married, and they were dread- 
fully poor. They lived in a gloomy, unattractive House- 
that- Jack-Built. They were too poor to have their one 
room all to themselves, so Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Solomon 
lived with them, with Isadore and Leah their children. 

By and by there was a tiny little new Ivan in their 
home, and big Ivan was poorer than ever. So it was only 
natural that he should remember that after his factory got 
through making cotton dresses there were still basting 
threads to come out, and buttons to go on. He had seen 
hundreds of Jewish women come to the side door of the 
factory and receive a mammoth pile of dresses to be "fin- 
ished." He had seen them staggering along the streets 
with them, hurrying home to earn money for rent and 
bread and clothes. So that is how our cotton dresses 
reach 

4. Little Ivan Horner 

For Rebekah, too, got a huge pile of dresses and hur- 
ried home to take out the bastings. Mrs. Solomon put on 
the buttons, Isadore and Leah helped, while the lazy 
baby crawled in between the finished and unfinished piles 
and cooed happily. But when he grew old enough they 
found he could pull out bastings as well as anybody, so it 



48 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

was this sleepy little new Jack-of -all-Trades who was 

Little Ivan Horner 

Sitting in a corner 

Pulling out basting threads; 

He pulled with his thumb, which helped him some, 

As he dreamed of pillows and beds. 

It was busily working that our Missionary always found 
them When she came to call. Among other things, she 
was teaching the women English, thinking they could 
surely get along more happily in America if they under- 
stood our language. You would have loved to hear the 
way they all liked our Missionary. It began with Leah 
and Isadore. 

Said Leah, age nine, in the dark hallway : "Sooner I 
looks on you, Lady, I has an awful glad. I ain't never to 
kiss mit a 'Merican lady yet, — und I has loves mit you !" 

Perhaps you can guess that dirty as this little Jew girl 
was, our Missionary was proud to kiss her. And they 
were always friends. 

Even Isadore, who being a boy, and twelve years old, 
was less likely to be rash, said shyly : "To first I has a 
mad on you for being a Krisht" (Christian). "My papa, 
says he, 'You should better have no kind feelings over 
Krishts — I could to have a mad on you for liking with 
one/ Says he, 'you ain't so big like I could tell you how 
the Krishts makes bad mit us in Russia, how they robs 
us and keeps us in prison and spits on us. Krishts makes 
no kindnes mit nobody.' " 

But our Missionary, so gentle, so neighborly, coming 
week after week, in rain or shine, teaching them to read 
English from the Bible, — every Jew in that tenement 
knew that this "Krisht" was different from those they 
knew in Russia! 

They whispered their troubles to her. "We ain't got 




"Wherewithal 

shall we "be clotKed? 



LLo. 



LITTLE JACK HORNER 49 

no moneys for buy nothings," one mother would say, 
"und my husband he has all times a big scare he shouldn't 
to get no more." "I have a frightened, too," said another 
mother, "my little Josef he cough und cough, — and hot, 
how he is !" 

So she comforted them, and nursed them, and loved 
them, and by and by it was only natural they should come 
to the "Krisht" mission, the Church mission settlement 
where Leah was in housekeeping classes, learning to cook 
and sew, and Isadore and Josef were in basketball classes 
learning to play fairly, and little Ivan was in story-telling 
classes. 

Once he went home and said to Rebekah, his mother : 
"I tells you somethings. You can't for to have a mad 
on Jesus When all times He has such loving feelings 
on us." 

I like to think that at each period of the making of our 
cotton dresses there may be some missionary teaching, 
helping, loving, climbing rickety stairs, making friends 
with the tired Jacks-of-all-Trades who pick the cotton, 
or weave it, or sew it up, who sew on buttons or pull 
out basting threads. I like to know our missionaries are 
representing us putting something cheerful in tired 
hearts: the lo\e of Jesus, and the neighborliness of His 
followers. 



IV. 
"JACK AND THE BEANSTALK" 

EVERYBODY likes a picnic! Especially a family 
picnic! The very mention of it brings up all sorts 
of nice memories in your mind: Of shoe-boxes 
full of sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, of almost 
missing the boat, of getting lost, of being drenched in a 
thunder shower, etc. — Remember? 

So perhaps you understand how little Jan Jackenowski 
was thrilled when he heard of the Picnic on which his 
family were to "Go to Beans," as the other Polish 
families called it. "Jan" * s the wa Y the Poles say "John," 
so you will understand at once that Jan is going to be a 
Jack-of-all-Trades for us when they all "Go to Beans," 
only they really think it is going to be a Picnic. Didn't 
the Padrone promise it would be? Why, of course he 
did ! Over and over. 

A Padrone is worse than a Landlord, lots worse, for, 
of course, any number of Landlords are wonderfully 
nice people, and mean all right, but a Padrone is hardly 
ever nice, and he never means all right ! You are going 
to hear a good deal about him in this chapter ; he is really 
sort of a Giant Ogre to poor families, and I only wish 
Jack could actually climb up to the top of some huge 
Beanstalk and live there, like the fairy-story Jack, for 
you will surely think that this Polish family lived in a 
perfectly horrid way at the foot of the beanstalks. 

51 



52 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

The Picnic was to take place in August, when picnics 
have a way of occurring. 

Jan Jackenowski and his family had not been in 
America very long, only about nine months. They had 
left Poland in November because poor peasants were so 
oppressed and unhappy there. It was on Christmas Day 
when they landed at Ellis Island to be inspected. Now 
Christmas is just as much fun in Poland as anywhere 
else, so the Jackenowskis were feeling a bit blue and 
forlorn to think of doing anything as inconvenient as 
landing in a strange country on the biggest holiday of the 
year. 

But it was not nearly so bad as they feared, for after 
all the Inspectors were through inspecting a very cheerful 
little lady, wearing a big apron with bulging pockets, met 
them and out of the pockets came the greatest lot of 
surprises: Dolls, horns, hair ribbons, neckties, a muffler 
for Papa Jackenowski and a handkerchief with a gay, red 
border for mother. 

This cheerful lady was our Missionary, who knows a 
great many different languages and stays at Ellis Island 
to meet the lonely people who land there. 

"Och, what a friendly place the United States is!" said 
Papa Jackenowski. "Everybody is friends on us at once. 
The gentlemen in uniforms that looked down our throats 
and inside our eyelids, were they not all smiles, as was 
also this kind lady? Taag, Taag, America is dobra, 
dobra!" (which is the Polish way of saying, "Yes, yes, 
America is fine, fine I"). 

So they went forth that Christmas morning with peace 
and trust, expecting to find everything else just as 
"dobra." They were disappointed quite often in the 
months that followed — their chilly rooms in the 
Tenement-House-that- Jack-Built were not "dobra," nei- 



JACK AND THE BEANSTALK 53 

ther were the wages which Papa Jackenowski earned. 
He had a job as a stevedore, a "trade" which means 
loading or unloading the cargo which is stowed away 
inside a steamer. It is heavy, dangerous work. But 
when the Big War got worse steamers from Europe 
stopped coming to New York and in July he found him- 
self with no job at all. Then came the Padrone, with his 
invitation to this "delightful picnic" — "A nice little 
family outing for you all, with the pleasant light work 
of picking beans — and good pay." 

So off they went to the Bean Farm with forty other 
Poles. But the Picnic was a dreadful disappointment. 

To begin with, the Padrone herded all these forty 
persons into one shanty, which had only one room, and 
he said they were all to sleep there and live there in their 
spare time: men, women, children. Of course it was 
horrid, for there were no partitions anywhere; each 
family had a "bunk" on the floor the size of which was 
determined by the number of persons in the family, also 
the number of families to share the floor space. These 
"bunks" were nothing more than shallow bins, the sides 
rising only ten or twelve inches, just enough to keep the 
straw and bedding in one bunk from spreading to the 
next. Their extra clothes had to hang from the rafters 
above, and it was altogether horrid, wasn't it ? Especially 
when they came back from a long, hot day's work with 
beans and found this shanty crowded with noisy, curious 
strangers. 

As for the beans, they were not a picnic, either! 
Everybody picked hard and fast all day long out in the 
broiling sun, or even in the rain, because they received 
so much money for each bushel picked at the end of the 
day. The slippery Padrone made everybody buy their 
food from him, and you may be sure he overcharged so 



54 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

terribly that his pocketbook would have burst if he had 
not gone to bank very often ! 

Poor little Polish Jan-of-the-Beanstalk. It's no fun 
to pick beans until your back is all tired out and then be 
scolded by the Padrone as a "slow old Polack!" 

After every bean was picked the Padrone next per- 
suaded everyone of these Poles to go over to the factory 
where the beans were to be cooked and canned. They 
all needed the money badly, so away they went, — men, 
women, and children. 

Stringing beans is not actually very hard work, no 
harder perhaps than throwing ball or jumping rope. But 
stringing beans continued hour after hour, from five in 
the morning to six at night, becomes racking to young 
muscles. Little Jan Jackenowski was frightened all the 
time to hear the rumble and clatter of the hissing steam, 
the jar and whirr of the clanking machinery, the rattle 
of the conveyors, and he hated the wet, sticky, slippery 
floors. 

"Nothin' ever keeps still here!" he would yell across 
to his sister who stood across from him snipping beans — 
beans — beans. 

Overhead there was the constant dropping of tin cans, 
one by one. It was up there that Jan's twelve-year-old 
sister put caps on forty cans a minute as they went flying 
by her on a moving board — wasn't that quick work? It 
made her eyes sting, and she felt wound up with the speed 
of it! 

Papa and Mrs. Jackenowski made $2.75 a day in that 
factory while Jan, being under ten, made 25 cents for 
ten hours' work (although toward night he kept falling 
asleep all the time; poor, little sleepy-head!). The other 
children made about seventy or eighty cents apiece. 

All over our country there are Polish families, some 



JACK AND THE BEANSTALK 55 

of whom "go to strawberries" in June, "go to peas and 
beans" in July, "go to tomatoes and corn and beets" in 
August, and then, having picked the vegetables, are 
rushed by the Padrones into factories to can them. 
There are over 4,000 canning plants in the United States. 
Some of the very largest of these do not employ a single 
child, they have wonderful machinery instead which does 
much quicker what Jan Jackenowski's little fingers try 
to do. But in perhaps 3,000 canning factories in Dela- 
ware, Maine, New Jersey, Maryland, and the Gulf States, 
there are busy little Polish and Italian children who snip 
our beans, pod our peas, peel our tomatoes, husk our 
corn, shuck our oysters, can our shrimps. Oysters and 
shrimps are so frightfully unpleasant to do; the heavy 
shells of the oysters tear the fingers, and the strange acid 
in the shrimps eats right into fingers and makes them too 
sore to use. Meanwhile there are anxious school-teachers 
who keep marking these children "-absent," "absent," 
"absent," week after week, until they realize that children 
who "go to vegetables" rarely come back to school, but 
grow up dull and listless and stupid, the kind that 
America will never, never need! 

You will be glad to know that about two years ago 
Papa Jackenowski got quite enough of "Picnics" with 
Padrones and came up to a New England village on the 
Connecticut River where he hired out to a farmer. It 
was an onion farm, and every time you see — or smell! — 
an onion I wish you would remember Jan Jackenowski's 
father! For I haven't a doubt that either he, or some 
other Polish father, spent ten hours on his knees in the 
black dirt planting, watering, weeding, to give us onions, 
and with him knelt Mrs. Jackenowski, the four girls, and 
Jan! 



56 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

Poles are a wonderful people. Probably you already 
know the names of two famous Poles: Paderewski, the 
great pianist, and Chopin, the great musical composer. 
Every Pole can't be famous, but we have missionaries 
who are trying to show these Poles in America that 
everyone of them can be honest and useful and a good 
Christian citizen. Jan Jackenowski went to our little 
Polish mission in his town and once, when the teacher 
had a review lesson, this is the delicious way Jan proudly 
retold the story of the Good Samaritan: 

"Comes walking a man, — Pole maybe, I thinks. Und 
comes running bad mens und joomps on him. Sooner 
they joomps on him they makes holes all over him und 
he most dies. Goes the bad mens, mit his watch und his 
knife und his pencil from silver, und he most dies some 
more. Then comes walking proud priest. Sooner he 
sees the man mit holes all over him, sooner he walks 
away quick. Comes walking nudder man. Goes quick, 
also. Comes riding good Sir American man. Sooner he 
sees, out he joomps. Hoists him into his auto — gently 
Teacher, and runs him to-er-er Free Dispensary perhaps, 
I thinks, und gives moneys on the Doctor. 'Cure my 
neighbor quick, und so I pays you more moneys/ he says. 
Und Teacher, sooner we sees anybody in troubles, he is 
neighbors on us, says Jesus, und we must be good Sir 
Americans on him quick." 

Don't you think he "caught the point" of that story 
beautifully? 

"Give us this day our daily bread" — how often we 
have all said those words which Jesus himself told us to 
use when we pray? Don't you like to know that He is 
the only one who really knows all the Jacks-of-all-Trades 
who plant, and water, and plough, and reap, and cook, 
and kill, and "can" to give us our daily bread? How 



JACK AND THE BEANSTALK 57 

can I even tell you about so many thousands of them? 
I have already shown you how busy it keeps the little 
and big Polish Jacks-of -the- Vegetable-Trade to give us 
our vegetables, and in chapter one I told you how many 
people it took to give us our simple breakfast of orange, 
cereal, bread and an tggl 

One of the things in your home that you love is jelly, 
I'm sure! And berries, too, — so I want to tell you a 
wee bit about the Unseen People who "go to berries" 
for us. 

"Going berrying!" That sounds just as much fun as 
Jan's "family picnic" sounded, but the next time you 
have jelly or jam, or strawberries, raspberries, black- 
berries, blueberries, or gooseberries, please remember 
that all the way from New England to Florida is an army 
of little Jacks-of-the-Berry-Trade, picking, picking, 
picking among thorns in the marshes with the hot sun 
and mosquitos making them prickly and uncomfortable 
and a cross Padrone shouting, "Presto! Presto!" which 
is the Italian way of saying, "Quick ! quick !" 

Cranberries are such jolly-looking little marbles of 
berries and we always eat them on such cheerful occa- 
sions like Thanksgiving and Christmas that it is upsetting 
to find they aren't a bit jolly to pick! Lots and lots of 
Italian families "go to cranberries" in the bogs of New 
Jersey, such slushy, marshy bogs where the mosquitos 
nip cruelly. One thousand or more little Giovannis and 
Mariettas rush all day long and sleep at night in a miser- 
able hut on a ramshackle cot. 

But there is something sweeter than jelly that you 
sometimes spend a penny for after school, or receive in 
big boxes on birthdays or Christmas! Can you guess? 
Yes, candy. Don't you love the glistening piles of 
Christmas candy tinted and scented like lovely blossoms 



58 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

in May? It seems as if such fairy candy must have just 
grown, or as if the May flowers had said: "Come on, 
let's be candy!" But three months before Christmas 
little candy factories begin calling in troops of children, 
mostly girls, to help make the tons and tons of candy 
we will all be eating later: red and white peppermint 
sticks, nice pudgy "suckers," glistening gum drops, dainty 
"buttercups," fascinating animals and engines from red 
and yellow transparent candy, dipped chocolates, and all 
the other kinds. It makes our mouths water to name 
them over! 

Sonia Czarovitch thought dipping chocolates was 
almost as much fun, at first, as making mud pies: "just 
plunging a little tidbit of candy into a vat of boiling 
chocolate, fishing it out and setting it away, all neatly 
coated, to cool." They let her eat as much as she wanted 
at first, too, until there came that dreadful day when 
she "couldn't to swaller another candy drop, never, not 
if I lived to be seven hundred years old, honest-to- 
goodness !" And the fun all disappeared, too, — ten hours 
of bending over the vat of boiling chocolate with that 
sickening, sweetish smell in her nostrils all day, ten hours 
of setting endless little brown balls on endless trays, ten 
hours of burning cheeks and blistered knees where the 
hot vats burned her legs — it wasn't fun at all! Sonia's 
cousins were poor, and they came to the side-door of the 
factory and took home pounds and pounds of the candy 
to wrap, piece by piece, in paper and pack in boxes. So 
the cheaper the candy you buy the surer you may be that 
some little girl your own age helped make it for you, — 
missing school and playtimes, too. 

And now we have "hugged" the eastern coast of our 
country long enough! I want to show you the kind of 
Jack-of-all-Trades who grow "things" out in the middle 



JACK AND THE BEANSTALK 59 

west. If we only had a magic carpet, flap-flap! swish- 
swash! and we'd be whisked out there in a jiffy. We 
would see broad, waving fields of golden grain, which 
remind me of that verse of the "New America" we sing 
so often since the war: 

"0 beautiful for spacious skies, 
For amber waves of grain, 
For purple mountain majesties 
Above the fruited plain. 
America ! America ! 
God shed His grace on thee 
And crown thy good with brotherhood 
From sea to shining sea." 

There are great stretches of rich farms all over North 
and South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa, 
Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky, 
where once there was nothing but howling wildernesses. 
Among the Jacks-of-the-Farming-Trade who have 
drained the low prairies, cut down the woods, cleared 
the fields and raised these wonderful crops of corn, and 
oats, and wheat are such fine, sturdy men as Hans from 
Holland, Johann from Sweden, Johannes from Germany, 
and plenty of Jacks from America, too. They live in 
Lonely-Farmhouses-that-stand-'midXjolden-Grain and I 
want you to meet Johann Strauss, one of our Bohemian 
Jacks, who lives on a Wisconsin farm. 

A good many years ago he and his father came over 
the sea from Bohemia; some wise Americans suggested 
their going west instead of trying to settle in some 
crowded city tenement. So they went way west to the 
Wisconsin farm and after years of ploughing, harvest- 
ing, and threshing they saved enough to send for the 
mother and sisters over in Bohemia. Over they sailed, 
with their queer, big bundles and shawls over their heads. 
At once they began to scrub up this "Lonely-Farmhouse- 



60 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

'mid-the-Golden-Grain" until it glistened like snow, and 
they were all very happy. 

Then along came a "Colporteur." Can you guess who 
he was? Well, he traveled in a wagon, like a Gypsy 
Caravaner, stopping at every single "Lonely-Farmhouse- 
'mid-the-Golden-Grain" (oh, miles apart they were!) to 
talk and pray with the people and leave them a Bible 
and tracts in their own language to read and think about 
afterwards. 

It is a wonderful thing to be a Colporteur, which is 
simply a short way of saying in one word: "A-missionary- 
on-wheels-or-on-foot-carrying-Bible-literature." He's a 
welcome guest wherever he goes and the scattered 
families cherish every tiniest scrap of paper he leaves 
them to read during the long winter evenings. Isn't 
it fine we have such a special kind of missionary? 
And don't you just love to think that wherever he leaves 
a Bible some boy is going to read it, and think about it, 
and live it, so that not only will he be sending golden 
grain to American mills, but he will be giving himself 
a golden boy to make a finer American citizen — clean, 
pure, honest. Perhaps if the colporteur can go back 
another year he can inspire many young "Jacks" to go 
to school and college. We have many missionaries 
preaching in tiny chapels dotted here and there through 
the golden grain country who came from Lonely-Farm- 
houses once, and now in autos, or in farm wagons, the 
Lonely-Farmhouse families in Sunday best decorously 
"ride to meeting" of a Sunday morning and listen to 
these very boys grown up into splendid, earnest preachers. 

While we are out west we must not overlook the Jacks- 
of-the-Cowboy-Trade, who raise cattle on great ranches, 
endless miles long. It is a wild, rough life and they 
become wild, rough men. We really ought to follow the 



JACK AND THE BEANSTALK 61 

cattle to the stockyards, in Chicago, if possible, but I 
am afraid you would hate it there, where the great, 
strong-armed Jacks-of-the-Butcher-Trade kill the very 
animals which will come on our dinner tables some day 
as lamb chops, roast beef, bacon or pork. I hate to tell 
you that only three years ago over 300 children were 
counted in some of the stockyards, standing on sticky, 
dreadful floors learning to prepare meats for our table. 

And now let's adopt some huge Seven League Boots 
and take one mammoth step from these unpleasant stock- 
yards clear over the Rockies into beautiful California 
where there are people who "Go to Fruit" : Grapes, 
raised by Italian Giovannis ; dates and prunes by a Greek 
Johannis ; lemons by a John Chinaman, and oranges by 
a polite little Japanese youth named "Ito." 

Over in Japan people bow to each other continually 
and say extravagantly polite remarks such as: "Excel- 
lency, you flatter me by condescending to notice such an 
insignificant person!" So it was a continual surprise to 
Ito that absolutely no one was ever polite to him in 
America. They cursed him for being slow out in the 
orange grove, they cheated him at his restaurant, the 
boys on the street teased him for his queer habits and 
appearance — nobody was polite. Then one day he was 
astonished: he passed one of our Japanese Missions in 
San Francisco, over the door of which was a sign saying 
in Japanese: "God is Love." 

He was curious about that word love in America, of all 
places, so he wandered into the mission to see this Idol 
of Love and maybe burn a little incense. But better than 
an Idol, he found a Japanese missionary and his wife; 
they had a home nearby where Ito was warmly welcomed 
and they all became, very good friends. He learned of 
the God of Love and while he was still (politely !) 



62 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

astonished that the Americans he had met did not seem 
to serve this God, he politely forgave them and started 
afresh himself. 

The next time we say grace at meals for our daily 
bread let us add a prayer for all these busy Jacks-of- 
all-Trades who have given us vegetables, meat, bread, 
jelly, fruit, and let us hope that each of them may always 
know by our actions that we are good "Sir- American" 
neighbors, as little Jan Jackenowski from Poland would 
say! 



V. 
"JACK, THE GIANT-KILLER." 

IF the tenement chapter was gray and dingy, and the 
cotton chapter was white and linty, and the vege- 
table, meat and grain chapter was green, red and 
yellow, then this chapter about coal is going to be black 
and sooty. 

In the first place even the town where a Jack-of-the- 
Coal-Trade lives is black, and it isn't as if there were 
only one such town, for there are thousands of them 
scattered all over Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 
Colorado, and other states. Perhaps there are more of 
them in Pennsylvania, for over 200,000 men and boys are 
busy in that one state getting us coal to make our homes 
comfortable in winter. You are going to meet one of 
these boys, Janos (pronounced Ya-nosh) is his name — 
the Hungarian way of saying Jack. 

When Janos Czako was only a baby, way over the 
sea in Austria-Hungary, he can dimly remember one day 
when his father kissed everybody goodbye three times 
around, after which nobody saw him for months and 
years. Probably you can guess what had happened! 
Mr. Czako had left for America to earn more money to 
support his large family. 

Two things made a big impression on Mr. Czako soon 
after he landed here: one was — how very, very unim- 

63 



64 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

portant a little speck of a person he was in the crowds 
and crowds of busy, rushing persons. Nobody paid any 
attention to him except perhaps to scowl when he 
awkwardly jostled him in the street. He nearly died of 
the loneliness. Then he received his second impression! 

He was riding in a crowded elevated train in New 
York when in got an immigrant woman. He could see 
in a minute she was not an American Lady — he knew 
from her dirty gingham apron, from the bright red shawl 
over her head, from her large, chapped hands that she 
was his sort. Yet when she stumbled into the crowded 
car, lurching around unable to reach a strap, up jumped 
a very splendid American Gentleman, who lifted his hat 
and said : "Won't you take my seat ?" 

Mr. Czako nearly fell through the window he was so 
surprised ! For he had been "taking in" that Gentleman 
for fully ten minutes, admiring every inch of him, from 
his high silk hat to his shiny shoes. Some day he fer- 
vently hoped he, too, might own just such gray gloves, 
such a necktie and such an overcoat. So naturally he 
was astonished that such a Grand Person should become 
uncomfortable for the sake of giving a seat to such a 
very Humble Creature. 

Then the thrill came! "We are all equal here!" he 
said to himself in Slavic, "I've always heard that about 
America. Nobody better than anybody else. That's fine 
— America's fine. And I'm going to be fine Gentleman 
like that myself. The folks won't know me when they 
get here!" He fairly glowed with new resolutions. 

Presently a very Fine American Lady got on the car 
and, since there was no seat, up jumped Mr. Czako, 
snatching off his smashed old hat as he said in his best 
English: "Tak sit, Leddy." How he beamed outside, 
and throbbed inside! But the very Fine Lady could not 



JACK, THE GIANT-KILLER 65 

have been a real Lady at all, for she entirely overlooked 
his friendly smile and saw only his torn, patched, greasy 
clothes, his dirty hands and his dinner pail. I suppose 
she hated to sit down where anyone like him had been. 
Anyhow, she ignored him, just as if he had been thin air, 
and pulling her skirts round her closely moved past him 
quickly further up in the car. 

Mr. Czako felt like a pricked bubble. All his joy and 
sparkle ebbed away. And he sank awkwardly back into 
the seat and felt lonely again. Luckily there was a 
Really-Truly Lady near him who saw the whole thing 
and knew how hurt he felt. So she planned a beautiful 
scheme when she found he was actually getting off where 
she was. She had her baby with her and there was a 
long flight of steps down Which they must walk to reach 
the street below. 

Smiling, she held out the baby to him. "Could you 
please carry the baby down for me ?" she asked. 

Could he? Well! The father of Janos took the dainty 
little white bundle into his arms and something divinely 
warm and friendly came into his heart. For he knew 
that a dear little clean white baby was infinitely more 
precious to its mother than any silk dress of any Fine 
Lady, yet this mother let him hold her precious bit of 
whiteness against his patched old working clothes, just 
to show she was friendly and kind, and that, that was 
American neighborliness ! 

He never forgot it. He whistled all day long, and 
indeed, during all that long, lonely winter when he left 
New York and went to work in a Pennsylvania coal mine, 
one of his pet dreams was of that dainty surprised baby 
cooing up into his face. But a strange change came into 
his thoughts. At first he fully expected to be that fine 
American Gentleman himself. But after a few months 



66 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

down in the dirty, grimy coal mine he knew that no soap 
or scrubbing-brush could ever wash away the dirt and 
grime which had wedged themselves deep into his skin. 
So he merely shifted things over : "My little Janos, my 
baby — I will save and save, so he can grow up and be 
fine Gentleman. Sure, I save lots for him." 

A coal mine is the most gigantic place: fearsome, 
dangerous, dark. When you get through reading this 
chapter run down into your cellar and look at the pile 
of coal with new eyes, as you make a mental picture of 
the mammoth Black-City-Under-the-Earth from which 
it was mined by strong, sturdy men, by Mr. Czako. 
Remember, that early every morning he went to the great 
black hole of the mine and got in a big cage, which rapidly 
dropped down, down, down, 800 feet, through the 
wooden shaft leading into utter blackness below. Bang ! 
and he was landed in the Black-City-under-the-Earth, a 
city with sixty miles of long, black avenues ; north, south, 
east, west stretched these tunnel-avenues, each several 
miles long, dimly lighted by electric bulbs. Through each 
avenue, called an "intake," was a track on which tiny 
cars were drawn by mules. Many cross streets inter- 
sected the main avenue, and opening from cross streets 
were "rooms" about ten by twelve feet. 

Mr. Czako and another miner worked in one of these 
black rooms together. They had tiny lamps in their caps, 
so they could see as they whacked great blows to loosen 
the walls of coal around them. All day they hewed away 
at those walls, piling the loosened pieces into little cars 
which the patient blind old mules carried to the mouth 
of the shaft. Very often they drilled holes into these 
walls of coal, filled them with explosives, lighted a fuse r 
and then rushed to the gangway for safety until after 
the explosion. This would sometimes loosen a ton or so. 



JACK, THE GIANT-KILLER 67 

But wasn't it a mysterious risky life to lead — way down 
there ? More dangerous than you can guess, for at any 
moment the poisonous gases might choke them, or a blast 
might break a thin wall that held back a raging flood of 
water in which they might be drowned ! Or, the ceiling 
of coal above their "room" might cave in, and bury them 
alive ! Don't you think it was rather brave and wonder- 
ful, that in the midst of all this peril and gloom, Mr. 
Czako still loved best his pet dream of little faraway 
Janos as an American Gentleman ? 

After years and years he saved enough to send for 
the family. He hired a shanty in Coal Town, oh, such 
a shanty ! and oh, such a town ! By this time he was used 
to the blackness and dirt, but the little Czakos from over 
the sea looked at it in horror and astonishment. 

Sophie, who was eleven, stood in front of the shanty 
and asked in a shocked scared voice : "What do you sup- 
pose has happened ? Just look at those tree stumps start- 
ing up from the ground ! And aren't there any real trees ? 
Or real birds? Or cows — or — things ? What makes it so 
awfully gone?" 

For the hills were yawning coal pits, black as ink. 
Great, gloomy dumps of grayish-black "culm" (refuse 
from the mines) stood all around these pits, where also 
loomed gigantic unstable-looking "breakers." And that 
was all she could see anywhere, except the dismal rows 
of shanties and shacks — the ugly "homes" of Coal Town. 
The alleys and gutters were littered with junk and gar- 
bage, tin cans, bottles, old shoes, broken crockery, stray 
rags. 

"I hate it here !" she said to her mother. "Didn't we 
always hear that America was prettiness and parks and 
fine homes for everybody?" 

Busy Mrs. Czako looked out at the hideous landscape : 



68 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

"Oh, well, some day we will be awful rich maybe, and 
we can move into a fine house somewhere else." 

"But maybe someone else from home will come over 
here," said Sophie softly, "I feel so sorry for them." 

Papa Czako said nothing. Down in his heart he knew 
he could never get rich in Coal Town, but he took eight- 
year-old Janos on his knees. 

"Little son," he whispered, "only boy I have, listen to 
thy father! Thou must be Gentleman some day. Fine 
Gentleman. Fine clothes, from wool, from silk, from 
white linen. Canes and shiny shoes thou must have. 
And always politeness. All over thee, politeness. Smiles 
and bowings. Kind feelings in the heart. But always 
bowings and smiles — so!" 

Janos beamed all over his sooty face. You simply can't 
keep clean in Coal Town. "Good !" he cried, "I be gen- 
tleman. See!" and bowed as his father wanted him to 
bow, until inside that ugly wooden shanty there were 
shouts of happy laughter as the merry Czakos rejoiced 
that after all these lonely years they were together once 
more. 

But the next morning when Janos watched his father 
get into the cage and sink down out of sight into the black 
coal pit, his heart seemed to sink with it. As he told our 
Missionary years later: "All the merry went out of me, 
when I seen him drop down the black hole. I knowed 
some day he couldn't to come back no more." 

It was only about four months later that one day he 
did not come back. There was a terrible explosion in 
his part of the Black-City-Deep-Under-the-Earth, and a 
rushing stream of water filled the room where Mr. Czako 
was working so suddenly that he had no time to escape, 
and he was drowned down there in the darkness. 

It seems very dreadful to know that that happens often. 



JACK, THE GIANT-KILLER 69 

In one way, it can't be helped, because no one knows 
when it may happen. But, oh, how the Czakos cared! 

It was then that Janos became a Jack-of-the-Coal- 
Trade, because he was the "man of the family" now. 

"It's lucky I'm big for my age!" he sighed, and al- 
though he was only eight, he paid a quarter to some man 
who then swore Janos was fourteen, quite old enough to 
work : old enough to be a Giant-Killer ! 

What giants do you suppose there are in Coal Towns ? 
First of all, there is the Giant Poverty, who keeps hungry 
stomachs empty and takes home away from families and 
clothes off their backs. Our little Hungarian Jack knew 
it would be hard to fight him. Rent, food, clothes all 
take Money, for money is the only sword you can use to 
fight the Giant Poverty. 

There is the Giant Terror, too, who makes hearts afraid 
of accidents and sickness, of darkness and the frightful 
noisiness of grim machinery. Janos got to know this 
giant well, for every day there were terrible things to 
scare him. He remembered his father who wanted him 
to be a gentleman, he remembered his trusting mother 
and sisters and he found that love was the only sword 
he could use to kill that giant. 

Worst of all, there was the Giant Sin, in Coal Town. 
A wicked giant that whispered in the hearts of tired 
Jacks-of-the-Coal-Trade : "Go to the saloon and drink, it 
will rest you"; or, "Oh, just steal something from the 
store, if you can't afford to buy ; doesn't the storekeeper 
cheat you all the time ?" Or, "Why give all your money 
to your family — you work for it, use it for yourself." 

But Janos-the-Giant-Killer, eight years old, was brave 
and true, and yet it was not until our Missionary gave 
him a Pattern to live by that he ever really killed that 
Giant Sin. I will tell you about it in a minute. 



70 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

Four days after his father died, Janos, swinging a din- 
ner pail, walked early to the huge, tall, black "breaker," 
where he was to earn wages as a breaker-boy. After 
the coal has been hoisted up from the pit, it is dumped 
into tremendous cylinders called breakers, and crushed. 
Then it is run down long chutes into a heap for hauling. 
The coal has slate and slag mixed in with it, and it is 
the job of the breaker-boys to pick these out of the flying 
stream as it dashes down the chutes. 

Janos was shown how he must sit humped up on a 
rough cross-beam, straddling this rushing coal, his feet 
planted in the chute to guide the coal. Black dust like a 
fog rose from the coal going pell-mell down the slide, — 
this dust got down his throat, it gritted into his skin, it 
burned in his eyes. He wore a miner's lamp fastened 
in his cap, which made a little halo of light around his 
frightened face so he could see the clinkers in the rush- 
ing coal. There he sat all day, bending, reaching, fling- 
ing aside the refuse, getting his hands cut and bruised! 
All day long his ears were deafened by the ceaseless 
swishing and sledging and snorting of the machinery as 
it hoisted, and crushed, and sorted the coal. Do you 
wonder he got to know the Giant Terror? Not only 
terror for his own safety, but terror lest he be crippled 
and unable to earn his precious sixty cents a day for the 
family. 

Sixty cents a day means three dollars and sixty cents a 
week, or fourteen dollars and forty cents a month. They 
paid six dollars a month as rent for the ramshackle 
shanty, so it left only a little over eight dollars for food 
and clothes for the seven of them. Not nearly enough, 
of course. So then Maria, Sophie, Annie and even little 
Teresa went into the silk mill as workers. 

In Pennsylvania coal towns there are usually silk mills 



JACK, THE GIANT-KILLER 71 

which lure the girls from playtimes and school. They 
earn very little money in comparison to the priceless 
things they give : their eyesight, for instance, which is in- 
jured by watching rushing threads all day long; their 
health, which is never the same after being in the hot, 
damp atmosphere; their tired, aching backs and their 
swollen feet. 

Just when Mrs. Czako was feeling most friendless and 
most worried about her tired, pale family, our Missionary 
called. She brought an unknown amount of cheer into 
that family. To begin with, she spoke Slavic, and she 
understood about everything at a glance. She helped 
Mrs. Czako to nurse little Teresa, who had had a bad 
accident to her arm in the silk mill. She got the family 
to join clubs in the mission, where they not only played 
games together with other children their ages, but 
learned useful things, like sewing and cooking. The baby 
and little Olivia went into the mission kindergarten, Mrs. 
Czako went to the Mothers' Club. Janos alone held aloof 
at first. 

"Too black !" he said to the missionary, ashamed, hold- 
ing out his rough, torn, black hands and pointing to his 
sooty face. 

But she knew a thing or two ! She took both his hands 
in hers, and smiled into his lonely eyes: "The black 
looks beautiful to me because you are doing it for some 
one else, unselfishly. At the mission we show boys how to 
keep white inside — There is a Pattern." 

Then Janos understood that this was his chance for 
living out his father's dream of some day being a Gentle- 
man. He timidly whispered about it to the Missionary: 
"Can youse learn me how to be one of them?" he asked. 
"Will that there Pattern you told on help me ?" 

The "Pattern ,, did help him. It will help any boy 



72 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

who really wants to be a Giant-Killer. The next time 
you feel the heat warming your house in cold weather, 
remember Janos, the patient little "breaker-boy" with 
the black face, but the white soul. And pray that the 
Missionary may find the way to make the one great Pat- 
tern a living personal Friend to each breaker-boy in the 
town. 

Much as we all need coal, we need steel just as badly. 
But we can't get steel until several hundred raging coke 
ovens have melted iron ore, and I want to give you a little 
glimpse of one of those coke furnaces so that when you 
see a needle, or a pen, or a knife, or a typewriter, or a 
car-track, or a steel car you will say to yourself : "Steel 
needed coke ovens, and coke ovens needed Giant-Killers, 
and Giant-Killers need Christ/' 

I used to like to read about the three men in the Fiery 
Furnace. I used to think and think about it : How brave 
it was not to be afraid, to prefer death rather than deny 
God. But there are Jacks-of-the-Steel-Trade today who 
never say the name of God, except as a curse, who spend 
all their lives stoking giant furnaces all day long. Drip- 
ping with perspiration, exhausted with the frightful heat, 
they do it to give us needles to sew our clothes, compasses 
to guide our ships, knives to cut our food, nails and 
screws to build our homes, shovels to dig our gardens, 
cars to travel in, boats to sail in. They live in very 
desolate, ugly towns, with few pleasures and many sor- 
rows. There are missionaries in those towns, too, — not 
nearly enough to go around, but a few who work as 
hard as ever they can to spread the extra cheerfulness 
that always comes into the home where Christ is. 

I think they are Giant-Killers, too, don't you? And 
aren't you rather glad that you can "do your bit" to whack 
at these giants of Poverty, Terror and Sin who haunt 



JACK, THE GIANT-KILLER 73 

the homes of miners? For you remember that when 
Jesus was here among men He said: "Inasmuch as ye 
have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, 
ye have done it unto me." 




Paradise Alley- 
no s\in, no frontyara 
no grass, no place £ox play 



*Li 



VI 



"ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK 
A DULL BOY" 

UNDER my window as I write are a little girl and 
a little boy, neighbors of mine. 
Says Johnnie: "I'll be the Engineer and you 
be the Passenger." 

Barbara answers : "Oh, I don't want to, Johnnie ! I'm 
always the Passenger, and I keep falling off. You let me 
be Engineer." 

Johnnie yanks the sled up the steps and lets her be 
Engineer, once. I hear her dear little voice screaming: 
"All aboard for New York, San Fr'isco and Halifax." 

She doesn't know a thing about geography yet, you see, 
or she would know that one train would have a dreadful 
time going to all three places in one trip! But she has 
heard about these cities, and they make wonderful names 
to yell at Passengers, as she collects 'tickets. Johnnie's 
ticket is a lump of snow, when she "punches" it, it quite 
disappears ! Then the Engineer gets on in front to steer, 
and the poor Passenger takes what is left of the sled. 
Off they go, sliding down the front walk — when they 
first stop, that's New York! Then the Engineer vigor- 
ously prods her heels into the snow, and off they start 
for San Francisco. They play that way all day long — 
Johnnie and Barbara, my neighbors. / love it! In sum- 

75 



76 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

mer they use the swing in the backyard to travel in, for 
they're great travelers — they've been everywhere on these 
"pretend" journeys. Their cheeks are rosy with the fresh 
air, and there's room for them to play safely on our 
lawns and sidewalks. 

That is because Johnnie and Barbara are Comfortable 
Children. They don't have to make forget-me-nots, or 
snip beans, or pull bastings, they don't even dress them- 
selves yet, because they're only four and five years old. 
But Giovanni and Ivan were lots younger than that when 
they became Jacks-of-a-Trade, weren't they? 

Across the street from me is a girl of fourteen who 
plays tennis in summer, and skates in winter, every day 
after school. She is a big strapping, healthy girl — just a 
dear! Rosy cheeks and a merry smile. She does not 
have to put tin tops on forty tin cans a minute, hour after 
hour, or run a sewing machine g*rrr up one seam and 
g'lng down another, pell-mell. Her mother just wants 
her to play, and play, and play. She can see it is making 
her into a fine, strong girl, the kind America will need 
some day to be a wife and a mother and a helper every- 
where. 

Down in their hearts, mothers are all like that. They 
want the best things for their children. I don't believe 
the mothers of Giovanni and Ivan and Jan wanted them 
to work all day in dark, stuffy rooms, to grow up dwarfed 
and cheerless and dull, do you ? It was because a Land- 
lord must have rent, and a Padrone could overwork them, 
and a Business Man underpaid them, that they had to call 
in the children from play to earn some extra money: 
"Come Ivan, pull out basting threads fur mudder!" or, 
"Hustle up, Jan, pick de beans faster, sooner I sees you 
gazin' off to butterflies again, I licks you sure !" or, "Gio- 



ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY 77 

vanni, maka de forgess-a-me-nots presto, dat's a good 
leetle boy." 

And what do they play when there's time for it — these 
tired little Jacks-of -all-Trades who live in gloomy tene- 
ments, down back alleys, in miserable shacks by dismal 
dump hills? Just what you play ! Exactly! Little girls 
are being mothers to shabby little headless dolls — perhaps 
little clothespin dolls, wrapped up in dirty rags. They 
cuddle them, and sing them to sleep, because little girls' 
arms are made for dolls, just as mothers' arms are made 
for babies. A Mrs. Missionary I know told me that 
once in a dingy, sooty mining town she met little Minna 
Szenvey clasping to her breast the most forlorn, scrawny 
kitten in the world. But Minna, who never had owned 
a doll, or a teddy bear, was beaming all over her sooty 
face. 

Olga Dobsa always dreamed of owning a growing 
flower sometime, and on Easter Sunday at our mission 
they had given out seeds for each child to plant at home. 
There was no back yard but ash barrels where she lived, 
and no front yard but sidewalks, so she filled an old box 
with earth and planted her precious seeds there. She 
set the box on a window sill opening on the dingy court, 
where the sun only rested about twenty minutes a day. 

Two weeks later when the Missionary came to call, 
Olga had a request: "Could you to do favors on me?" 
she asked timidly. 

"Of course, I will, dear," the Missionary said. "What 
can I do?" 

"I wants as how you should make me a sign what 
reads 'KEEP OFF THE GRASS' in big words, like 
what it says by parks. So I puts it on my new garden. 
Sooner my brudder und my uncles und our boarders 
comes back from de factory for sleepings, they makes 



78 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

them jokes mit my garden — bad jokes, Leddy. They 
pokes at it mit fingers, und spits at it. You could to help 
me mit signs." 

So the Missionary printed in big black letters "Keep 
Off the Grass," but she could hardly see the words, her 
eyes were so blurred with tears about this poor, feeble, 
little shoe-box garden in a sunless window, four stories 
up from the cluttered courtyard. 

Not one of these children wants to grow up "dull." 
The boys dream of baseball and skating and being presi- 
dent some day, but "going to beans" and being a "coal- 
breaker" ends many a dream, zip-bang! You can imagine 
how doing one monotonous thing over and over all day 
tires them out. 

But playtime-play isn't all the play there is: for lots 
of our lessons are play, too. My neighbors, Johnnie 
and Barbara are going to enjoy geography immensely, 
because they've played going to all the big cities there 
are! The Girl-Who-Skates likes Physics, because she 
wonders what makes ice, anyhow! Most lessons are 
stories, and they make us grow up brighter and wider- 
awake. The pity of it is that little Jack-of -all-Trades 
has to miss school, too. If it's bad for him to grow up 
"dull," it's just as bad for America, for we don't need 
ignorant, stupid people here. 

It is very nice to know that there are quantities and 
quantities of Important Comfortable People who care; 
they care so much that they generously give all their time 
and money and thought to changing as many of these 
wrongs as they can. They have appointed various per- 
sons and formed certain societies to help Jacks-of -all- 
Trades. Let me introduce you to some of them. 

There is first of all the "TRUANT OFFICER" in 
your town, who goes around to see that every child under 



ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY 79 

fourteen goes to school. For even under fourteen, you 
can learn enough to keep you from growing up entirely 
"dull." But dear me! Jack and Jill in the cotton-mill, 
and Janos in the coal-breaker, children of eight, and ten 
and twelve are taught to say they are "Fourteen, Sir!" 
So it prevents these busy officers from helping many and 
many a child. 

There is the "CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE" in 
your town, which helps Jack-of -all-Trades by trying to 
have laws passed in every state forbidding any child 
under fourteen to work; and ordering that those over 
fourteen must work in safe places and under proper sur- 
roundings. It is slow work, because there are still lots 
of Very, Very Comfortable Business Men who don't care 
a rap for the unseen Jacks-of-their-Trades, if only their 
pocketbooks get fuller and fuller. One such man who 
employed hundreds of children under twelve and paid 
them tiny wages said to a kind Child Labor Chairman: 
"What does it matter, anyhow, it isn't as if they were 
American-born children, they're only Immigrants!" 

So in our towns we often have an "AMERICANIZA- 
TION COMMITTEE" to show us all how to feel neigh- 
borly to Immigrants, and realize that they matter just as 
much as anybody else. I am sure you know where the 
city of Detroit is, so you may be interested to know that 
there this committee has challenged the women of that 
city to : 

1. Put one immigrant family on your calling list. 

2. Teach one foreign-born mother English. 

3. Get one immigrant to become a citizen. 

4. Americanize one immigrant woman. 

There is also in your town "THE SOCIETY FOR 
THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHIL- 



80 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

DREN" which has authority, with the police, to make 
drunken fathers, cross, tired, thoughtless mothers, cruel, 
slippery Padrones, and other law-breaking persons treat 
little Jack-of -all-Trades properly. 

Another rather new aid to young Jacks-of -all-Trades 
is called the "JUVENILE COURT." Dull boys, who 
neither play, nor go to school, are very apt to become 
criminals — that means stealing, gambling, drinking, lying, 
cheating — doing all sorts of wrong things. Some years 
ago a cross policeman dragged such children into the 
Regular Court, where a stiff, proper Judge sat judging 
all the grown-up criminals. But it occurred to some of 
our Important Citizens that this was all wrong, because 
half the time the proper Judge for grown-up criminals 
probably did not understand wicked children at all ; more- 
over, it was bad for such children to be in prison with 
grown-up wrong-doers, who put even worse ideas in 
their heads. So they decided to have a Juvenile Court 
especially for children, with a Judge who understood 
children, and could therefore think up wiser punishments 
than clapping them into a prison cell! These children's 
Judges discovered that sending bad boys and girls out in 
the country to work on farms did wonders for them. 
"Reformatories" we call such places, because they make 
children over, and can often send them home after a few 
years to be safe and honorable citizens. 

Then other, even wiser, Important People said: "But 
why let these street boys and girls become criminals? 
It's because they have no decent homes and no nice place 
to go that they drift into trouble. Let's form clubs and 
playgrounds for them." I could hardly give one big 
name to all these people, there are so many of them every- 
where: clubs in social settlements, Y. W. C. A. clubs, 
Y. M. C. A. clubs, Church clubs, mission clubs, mission 




Li 



"Extry! 

All about 
tl\e Bi£ "Fire ! 



a 



ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY 81 

playgrounds, school and city playgrounds. All to save 
young Jack-of-all-Trades from becoming wicked and 
wild. 

Once I heard of a Comfortable Old Gentleman who was 
asked to give money for a Street Boys' Club. He said, 
rather crossly: "No, sir, I give no money for kids like 
that — why, their work is only play, anyhow!" 

I wonder? 

Let's pretend for the minute that the street boys' work 
is play. It wouldn't be at all hard to pretend that the 
newsboys were playing "Eye Spy !" Here's a wideawake 
little Jack: Eye-Spy, he sees a man coming: "Piper, 
mister? 'Xtry — all about the big fire! Yes, sir, two 
cents." Slipping the money in his pocket, Eye-Spy, he 
quickly flies over to another man : "Got your piper, sir." 
Then like a streak of lighting, Eye-Spy again, he dashes 
through the jam of autos, trucks, bicycles, to swing him- 
self on a street car where someone whistled for a paper. 
One second he perches there like a bird, then jumps off 
while the car is rushing ahead, and quick as a flash he 
skims away to other buyers, Eye-Spy here and Eye-Spy 
there, calling in his shrill voice: "Piper! Piper, mister! 
'Xtry, all about the big fire !" 

Jack pays $1.40 for one hundred papers, so if he 
sells them all he makes sixty cents. But it may take 
hours and hours to sell them all. In the winter, city 
streets are burrrr! so cold! Haven't you ever seen the 
little newsies gather on the gratings in front of business 
buildings where big electric fans indoors are forcing the 
hot, foul air outdoors? Here they huddle shivering, 
telling horrid jokes to each other, and catching terrible 
colds from breathing those blasts of bad, hot air. 

Then in summer, surely you have seen the little newsies 
sitting on the sidewalk, in the shade, playing an absorbing 



82 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

game either with marbles or with cards. These are 
gambling games, money for each point, and some boy 
always has to lose what he has earned, or else how could 
another boy win ? 

At first, perhaps, our Jack won't play. 

"Well, watcher do wid yer coin then, Kid?" the other 
newsies ask him. 

"Gives it to me mudder," Jack says. 

<< Mommer f s Boy! Mommer's Boy!" they taunt him. 
"Aw, come on and play craps." 

"I dassn't," he says, knowing only too well how every 
penny is needed at home for food or rent. 

But the memory of those sneering voices: "Mommer's 
Boy" follows him wherever he dashes Eye-Spy through 
the crowds, — and one day, he plays. And he loses! Then 
he goes home and lies about it. 

"Say, whatcher think? A feller comes up and soaks* 
me — takes every cent I got," he whines, to explain why 
he has nothing in his pocket for the family purse ! 

The next time he loses, he dreads lying again, so he 
steals some food from a store, all he dares "swipe," and 
gives it to his mother, pretending he bought it. That is 
the way the Eye-Spy boys go wrong, step by step, until 
our Jack is a tough little thief, and liar, and gambler, 
afraid to see a policeman coming. 

One day a man walks up to Jack. 

"Hello, sonny. Give me a 'Herald,' will you ?" Then : 
"What are you going to do tonight?" 

"Dunno! Fool 'round wid de fellers." 

"Look here, I know a place where twenty boys are 
going to play games tonight. How about my coming for 
you, and we'll go together ?" 

Jack looks the man over. "Sure!" he says, a little 
bored, a little excited. "Me fer tryin' anything onct. 



ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY 83 

Bet it's a saloon. Last time I goes to a saloon, mister, 
say, I gets so drunk I dassn't go home. ,, 

The man frowns. "No, this isn't a saloon, sonny. 
What hour shall I stop for you?" 

They make a date and the man walks off. 

"Who's de guy?" asks an envious newsy. 

Jack swaggers: "O me newest friend wat lives on 
Fifth Avenoo — he's axed me to his diggings tonight, too. 
Whatcher know about that? 'Xtry! 'Xtry! All about 
the big explosion !" 

Have you guessed that the man was a Missionary, and 
that the place "finer than a saloon" was a mission play- 
ground for just such wild little Eye-Spy Jacks-of-the- 
Street-Trade as he? It was just a simple place, where 
boys could play games, basketball, too, and sing songs, 
with occasional "eats," and stories about men who had 
done things worthwhile, always men who had followed 
the Great Pattern of Mankind, Jesus Christ. 

There were "Tag! You're If' boys in that mission, too 
— do you know them ? Oh, yes, you do ! They are the 
messenger boys, Jacks who wear blue uniforms and 
deliver yellow envelopes marked "Telegram" all over 
your town. All day long you can find them sitting around 
yawning in telegraph offices, waiting for a telegram that 
needs to be delivered, and reading cheap "dime novels" — 
wildly exciting horrid stories of absurd things that never 
could, would or should happen. "Tick-ticki-tick" comes a 
telegram over the wires, then Tag !-You're-It ! off dashes 
Jack to play this business game of "Hide and Go Seek." 
But the worst part of his work comes at night when you 
and I are in bed, for then they work for the "Dreadfully 
Wicked People" who live in every town, and who are 
widest awake when good people sleep. It isn't right 



84 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

for any boy to carry messages to Bad People, he only 
learns to be bad himself, and the only thing it fits him to 
be is a jailbird ! So when a mission playground can catch 
an occasional Tag !-You're-It Boy, they help our beautiful 
America to have one more clean, honest citizen. 

Once in a while a "Ring-Around-a-Rosy"-Jack strays 
into the mission. You've seen him, I know : a little Greek 
boy whom a Padrone (remember?) keeps on the street 
selling flowers that are too old for the shops, or maybe, 
you've seen him selling fruit at a street fruit-stand. He 
rarely has any time to spare for playing anywhere, 
though, because Padrones always keep their workers 
rushing busily all day long. 

I think I am sorriest of all for the "Blind-Man's-Buff"- 
Jacks, though. Whenever I see a bootblack with his 
polishing rag stretched wide out, one end in each hand, 
it always looks to me as if perhaps he were just going to 
clap it around his head and tie it there as they do in 
Blind Man's Buff ! He really might just as well do that, for 
the bootblack Jacks see nothing but feet, feet, feet all day 
long, as they kneel in front of footstools. High up above 
them in raised chairs sit the G entlemen-W ho- Are- Always- 
in-a-Hurry, so they shine, shine, shine, pell-mell, hardly 
taking time to look up at the faces of these hurried cus- 
tomers. They are afraid of the Padrone, too, such a 
comfortable oily Padrone with a diamond stickpin and 
a cruel heart, who does not care that these boys have no 
time to themselves, no time to play, or learn, or rest. So 
much for some of the street boys whom clubs and play- 
grounds help keep from becoming bad. 

When summer comes with its hot, sultry days, which 
are hotter and stickier and harder to bear down where 
there are the Tenement-Houses-That-Jack-Built, then the 
"FRESH AIR FUND" sends the tiredest, sickest little 



ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY 85 

Jacks-of-all-Trades out into the sweet, green country for 
two weeks. Oh, how they love it ! Minna Szenvey finds 
the world has more kittens and puppies and lambs and 
cows than she ever dared dream: dear, lazy, happy ani- 
mals that placidly exist all through the drowsy days, and 
never slink away when little girls come near. Olga Dobsa 
looks all day long, but never finds a "Keep Off the Grass 
Sign" in a single meadow ! She even thinks the friendly 
daisies and buttercups are nodding their heads at her, 
when the breezes blow. 

"Und de flowers grows mit colors all over them, from 
yellow, from pink, from blue; and nobody slaps you as 
they does by parks und says 'You dassn't to pick them.' 
It's like it is by Heaven, I guess," Olga told her sisters 
when she got home to the broiling city. 

I think the Friend of Little Children must especially 
bless all these Comfortable People who are willing to be 
a bit uncomfortable in order to make life happier for 
Jacks-of-all-Trades. We know how Jesus felt about chil- 
dren, for when He was here among men, He said one 
day: "Whosoever offendeth one of these little ones, it 
were better for him that a millstone were hanged about 
his neck, and that he should be drowned in the midst of 
the sea. For it is not the will of your Father in Heaven 
that one of these little ones should perish." 

We can't help but see that our Missions, where Jack- 
of-all-Trades learns to put the love of Jesus in his heart, 
do the most good of all these fine societies. For loving 
Jesus means serving Him, and the only way to serve Jesus 
is to help spread His Kingdom by living as He lived: 
being kind, honest, truthful, neighborly, even uncomfort- 
able at times. He is the One Great Pattern, and those 
of us who are Comfortable are to walk hand-in-hand with 
Jack-of -all-Trades, making our America beautiful because 



86 JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES 

we all "study to show ourselves approved unto God, 
workmen that need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the 
word of truth." 



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